A Global Ex-vessel Fish Price Database: Construction and Applications

Synopsis We describe the first effort at creating a global ex-vessel fish price database, which is required for understanding the economic behavior of participants in the world’s fisheries. We demonstrate potential applications of the database by linking it to a spatially defined catch database, which makes it possible to attach landed values to species in both time and space. This is the first database available publicly where interested members of the public, researchers and managers can easily find and access ex-vessel prices of the world’s major commercial fish species. Preliminary results indicate that the average real price of a number of species have declined between 1950 and 2002. The estimated landed value of fish globally, in year 2000 dollars, was about US$24 billion in 1950. It increased steadily to about US$90 billion in the early 1970s, reached a peak of US$100 billion at the end of the 1980s, and declined to about US$80 billion in 2000. The top 15 fishing countries cumulatively account for 79% of total real landed value, with Japan leading, even though the value of its landings has been declining.      

TAX AND SAVINGS IMPLICATIONS OF THE CANADIAN REGISTERED RETIREMENT SAVINGS PLANS

This paper shows that the net effective tax rate on the Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) in Canada has not been inflation non-neutral because of the combination of the non-neutrality of various sources of retirement income and the progressivity of the personal tax system. The paper also shows that although the RRSPs provide some tax arbitrage opportunities, these opportunities in Canada are limited due to the non-tax-deductibility of interest on mortgage and consumer credits. Finally, on theoretical grounds, the paper argues that the RRSPs may not have provided any incentives for personal savings in Canada.     

Mapping Ethics Education in Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Journal of Business Ethics - The attention being paid to ethics education in accounting has been increasing, especially after the corporate accounting scandals at the turn of the century. This...     

The Effect of Culture and Religiosity on Business Ethics: A Cross-cultural Comparison

This article examined the effect of culture and religiosity on perceptions of business ethics among students in a tertiary institution in Malaysia. A structured questionnaire was developed with scenarios on various aspects of business ethics, and self-administered to the students in the business studies program. The results from 767 respondents showed that there were significant differences among the Malays, Chinese, and Indian students on seven scenarios namely selling hazardous products, misleading instructions, selling defective products, padding expense account, taking sick to take a day off, keeping quiet on defective products, and respond to supplier’s take good care of clients attitude. There was also an association between culture and religiosity. The MANOVA results also showed that culture and religiosity have an effect on perceptions of business ethics.     

Measuring health expenditures and outcomes in saarc region: health is a luxury?

The objective of the study is to investigate the link between health care expenditures (HCE), economic growth and health outcomes (i.e., life expectancy (LE), infant mortality and the share of elderly people) for a panel of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries; namely, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; over the period of 1995–2010. The developed panel cointegration technique is employed for analysis of short and long-run relationship between the variables. The results of panel cointegration found that there is a long-run relationship between health expenditures, economic growth and health outcomes in SAARC region. The estimated results indicate that both, LE and share of elderly people in population have a negative relationship related to the HCEs which signifies that HCEs are luxury goods in SAARC countries. The burden of aging population can be lowered by provision of quality health services and utilization of their experience and knowledge in dynamics of economic development forecasting. Furthermore, there is no significant relationship found between infant mortality rate (IMR) and HCEs which implies that HCEs do not provide sufficient benefits to reduce infant mortality. Similarly, HCEs are not enough in generating GDP, lowering IMR and increasing LE in SAARC region. The implementation of appropriate tax reform, stable food prices and trade promotion for low transaction cost medical equipment is required for the SAARC region.     

The Information Content of Dividend Initiations and Firm Size: An Analysis Using Bid-Ask Spreads

The bid-ask spread of stock prices is examined for a sample of dividend initiating firms. The average percentage and dollar bid-ask spreads increase significantly on the day preceding the Wall Street Journal Index announcement date, possibly reflecting, on average, the market maker's anticipatory uncertainty. The day -1 increase in spread is inversely associated with firm size, an information environment proxy, after considering the simultaneous effects of dividend yield, returns variance, dollar trading volume and share price. The average percentage spread declines significantly on day 0 from its day -1 level and remains lower, on average, over a 365 day post-announcement period than 90 day pre-announcement levels. Similar results are obtained for dollar spread averages. The post-announcement percentage spread decline suggests a resolution of uncertainty, and is positively associated with the dividend yield. Dividend initiation announcements appear to reduce informational asymmetry.     

Potential ecological and economic impacts of sea lice from farmed salmon on wild salmon fisheries

This paper examines the possible ecological and economic effects of sea lice from salmon farms on wild salmon populations and fisheries. A bioeconomic model is developed incorporating an age-structured population dynamics model of wild pink and chum salmon with mortality caused by farm-derived sea lice. Our model incorporates capture fisheries under two management policy scenarios. Results suggest that the ecological and economic effects are minor when the sea lice induced mortality rate is below 20%, while they can be severe if the mortality is greater than 30%. Sea lice have greater ecological and economic impacts on pink salmon than on chum salmon. The impact of farm lice epizootics on wild salmon is greater under a fixed exploitation rate than under a target escapement policy. As a result, a precautionary principle should be adopted, and appropriate management schemes and policy strategies should be developed to minimize these effects.     

Optimal Management of Soil Quality Stocks and Long-Term Consequences of Land Degradation for Smallholder Farmers in Malawi

While soil degradation has long-term consequences, static models which form the bulk of studies on this topic in Africa, do not account for the inter-temporal dimensions of optimal resource management. This paper used an inter-temporal optimisation framework, which considered soil in a time-dependent resource extraction perspective. We have demonstrated that soil degradation is causing an enormous reduction in productive value of smallholder land in Malawi. Current user cost of soil quality among smallholder farmers, which represents annual loss in productive value of land, was estimated to be US$21 per hectare. Based on this value and land area under smallholder agriculture in Malawi, economic costs of soil degradation among smallholder farmers were estimated to amount to 14% of the agricultural GDP for Malawi. Although smallholder farmers’ current practices are sub-optimal to Steady State solutions, they are above static solutions. This demonstrates that smallholder farmers have some private incentives to invest in the soil quality stock. Smallholder farmers internalise some of the dynamic costs of soil degradation under the current practices. However, a sensitivity analysis on a slightly higher discount rate indicates that SS solutions closely resemble the prevailing smallholder farming practices. This suggests that smallholder farmers may be overexploiting soil quality stock because they have a high time preference. That is, they value the current consumption more than their future consumption and wellbeing. High levels of poverty in Malawi and serious lack of viable alternatives to subsistence farming may be influencing such behaviour. Promoting more viable land use alternatives than subsistence farming and formuling policies that help transform smallholder agriculture into a profitable enterprise will not only increase the cost of degrading the soil, but also encourage farmers to invest in the soil quality stock.