Exploring the male Chinese tourists’ motivation for commercial sex when travelling overseas: Scale construction and validation

Sex and tourism has long been understudied. Little is known about tourists' motivations for consuming commercial sex while travelling, and even less, if indeed anything, is known about that of Chinese outbound tourists in particular. Based on twenty interviews and two surveys with a sample of 534 male Chinese tourists who had engaged in commercial sex when travelling overseas in the previous 12 months, this study aimed first to explore why male Chinese tourists travelled overseas and purchased commercial sex, and second to construct a comprehensive scale for measuring male tourists’ motivations for overseas commercial sex. With acceptable reliability and validity, the measurement scale yielded in this study consisted of eight motivation dimensions labelled as socialisation, relaxation and escape, travel-related novelty, sexual desire fulfillment/excitement seeking, sex-related learning, sexual mastery, social prestige, and business/pragmatic purpose. Both the theoretical and methodological implications related to the developed scale are also discussed.     

Open economy and financial burden of corruption: theory and application to Asia

We discuss why corruption remains high and show that corruption contributes to the Banking distress and to the rapid transmission across international stock and currency markets. Undeveloped ‘derivative securities’ markets make the risk from stress-induced volatility difficult to manage. Vinod’s (1999) closed economy model is extended to indicate the asymmetry of ‘home bias’ and the effect of corruption on the value at risk (VaR). Our theory predicts that capital flight controls will be many, foreign direct investment (FDI) will be low and cost of capital will be high in corrupt developing countries, which is supported by Asian data. We include some policy recommendations regarding financial institutions and markets.     

The impacts of Hong Kong’s Currency Board reforms on the interbank market

Among the economies with a Currency Board System (CBS), Hong Kong (HK) is probably the one with the largest and most developed financial sector, as well as the highest capital mobility. Hence, studying HK’s CBS is not only crucial to HK, but also important for the understanding of the modern CBS. This paper outlines the major monetary reforms in HK since the late 1980s. The impacts of these reforms and the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis are then examined empirically. We focus on the differentials between the US and HK interbank interest rates. We assume the conditional-mean equation follows an autoregressive process and the conditional-variance equation follows a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity process. This model captures the time-varying level and volatility of the differential. In light of the empirical results we provide an assessment of the reforms in HK.     

Consumption and stock markets in Asian economies

This paper investigates the causal links between stock market performance and consumption for five Asian economies by applying the bound tests of Pesaran et al. and lag augmented VAR of Toda and Yamamoto . We find two‐way causal relationships between stock market performance and consumption in the cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the long run. The existence of such two‐way causal links indicates that stock market performance and consumption mutually affect each other, implying that the previous studies may have overestimated the wealth effect of the stock markets without taking account of the reverse causation from consumption to the stock markets. The short‐run effect of the stock market on consumption is more visible than the long‐run effect in most of the sample economies, suggesting that changes in consumption directly reflect stock market fluctuations.     

Operations of a Pension Fund after the Asian Crisis: The Thai Experience*

During and after the Asian crisis, institutional investors and pension funds in Asian financial markets have been confronted with a number of difficulties effecting their performance and the way they carry out their role within the national pension system. We analyze these problems by comparing the actual investment policy of an institutional investor with an optimal investment strategy derived from the insights of modern portfolio theory. We also analyze whether the organizational set‐up of a pension fund allows it to adequately perform its role within the pension system. As an example, we examine the operations of the Thai Government Pension Fund (GPF). We find that allowing international investments and reducing restrictions on equity investments while lowering the implicit requirements for investments in government debt would allow the GPF to further diversify its investment risk and to increase its risk‐adjusted return. We also show that some changes in the governance structure of the GPF would lower the occurrence of conflicts of interest for the management and increase the efficiency of the GPF operations.     

基于“行为经济学理论”的旅游者行为分析

传统的旅游者行为分析方法,主要是进行定性的分析,将各个因素进行框架分析,而对旅游者行为的影响因素分析深度不够。借助行为经济学的理论和分析方法,从旅游者的心理活动角度入手,注重旅游者的心理变量分析,应用前景理论和心理账户分析旅游者行为,充分考虑了情境因素和体验因素,使得关于旅游者的行为分析更加细化和接近现实生活。     

游客对歌舞旅游产品真实性评判研究--以西双版纳傣族歌舞为例

以西双版纳傣族歌舞为例，研究了游客对歌舞旅游产品真实性的心理认识，以及各要素对游客真实性体验的影响。研究结论表明：表演人员的妆扮、歌舞表演的主要内容、伴奏时所使用的乐器、表演的气氛、舞蹈的基本动作、表演人员的精神面貌，主持人的解说等对歌舞真实性影响最大；其次为表演人员所属的民族、年龄、表演场地、歌舞培养方式、音乐的节奏旋律是否经过改编、演唱时所使用的语言、演出服装采用日常生活服装；表演人员的性别、表演时间、节目表演的先后顺序对歌舞旅游产品真实性没有影响。     

九黄机场对九寨沟国内旅游者结构与行为的影响

九黄机场通航通过改变出行时间和感知距离等旅游决策要素来影响到旅游者结构与行为.对比通航前后九寨沟国内旅游者结构与行为各特征变化,表明九黄机场对游客空间结构、年龄构成、收入构成、居住环境、来源地构成以及出游目的构成等均造成了一定影响,而对文化程度、滞留时间和周边景点游览行为几乎没有影响.最后就分析结果进行讨论,提出了进一步完善九黄旅游网络结构的可能途径.     

阳朔乡村旅游国内外游客消费需求比较分析

以阳朔乡村旅游的国内外游客需求进行了对比分析研究．通过访谈和问卷调查，重点对问卷调查中的国内外游客的行为特征、消费特征、需求特征和倾向进行了对比研究．从中总结了它对乡村旅游国内外市场发展的启示。     

Small dimension PDE for discrete Asian options

This paper presents an efficient method for pricing discrete Asian options in presence of smile and non-proportional dividends. Using an homogeneity property, we show how to reduce an n0 dimensional problem to a one- or two-dimensional one. We examine different numerical specifications of our dimension reduced PDE using a Crank–Nicholson method (interpolation method, grid boundaries, time and space steps) as well as the extension to the case of non-proportional discrete dividends, using a jump condition. We benchmark our results with Quasi Monte-Carlo simulation and a multi-dimensional PDE