tourism and economic development evidence from mexico s coastline tourism is a fast growing services sector in developing countries this paper combines a rich collection of mexican microdata with a quantitative spatial equilibrium model and a new empirical strategy to study the long term economic consequences of tourism both locally and in the aggregate we find that tourism causes large and significant local economic gains relative to less touristic regions that are in part driven by significant positive spillovers on manufacturing in the aggregate however these local spillovers are largely offset by reductions in agglomeration economies among less touristic regions so that the national gains from trade in tourism are mainly driven by a classical market integration effect

does tourism influence economic growth a dynamic panel data approach on average tourism specialized countries grow more than others this is not consistent with the core of modern economic growth theory that suggests that economic growth is linked to sectors with high tech intensity and large scale in this article we use appropriate panel data methods to study the relationship between tourism and economic growth in general we show that tourism is a positive determinant of economic growth both in a broad sample of countries and in a sample of poor countries however contrary to previous contributions tourism is not more relevant in small countries than in a general sample this is a fully modified version of a working paper co authored by one of the authors

specialisation versus diversification a simple model for tourist cities abstract by developing a simple general equilibrium structure this paper compares the welfare effects of tourism specialisation and economic diversification in tourist cities we discovered that tourist cities with limited carrying capacity easily suffer from side effects particularly dutch disease when faced with rapid tourism growth therefore such cities should actively use revenue that is generated from the booming tourism sector to pursue economic diversification for the sake of sustainable urban development

intervention analysis with cointegrated time series the case of the hawaii hotel room tax tourism taxes have become an important source of revenue for many tourist destinations in the usa among the most widely used is the hotel room tax levied by 47 states and many localities room taxes are touted by proponents as a way to shift the local tax burden to non residents while the travel industry claims the levies signi cantly harm their competitiveness previous studies of room tax impacts have relied on ex ante estimates of demand and supply elasticities in this study we analyse the ea ect onhotel revenuesof the hawaiiroom tax using timeseries interventionanalysis we specify a time series model of revenue behaviour that captures the long run cointegrating relationships among revenues and important income and relative price

tourism and environmental taxes with special reference to the balearic ecotax abstract during the last few decades tourism has undergone rapid growth however it seems clear that this growth is not exempt from certain costs economists attention is increasingly directed at the economic social cultural and environmental repercussions of tourism regarded as externalities focusing on the aforementioned repercussions the aim of this study is to confirm both the existence of external environmental costs and the need to internalise them with the aid of appropriate economic instruments in this respect an outline is given of the recent proposal by the government of the autonomous community of the balearic islands to introduce a tourist tax on visitors presented to public opinion in the form of an environmental tax and a critical review is made of the proposal in the light of a number of criteria regarded as relevant in the description design and implementation of these taxes

pioneering price level targeting the swedish experience 1931 1937 in september 1931 sweden became the first country to make the stabilization of the domestic price level the official goal of its monetary policy actually the only country that so far has adopted such an explicit price level target starting from the issues and concepts familiar from research and policy experience of inflation targeting as contrasted to price level targeting this paper examines the evolution of the swedish price level targeting in the 1930s we bring out a number of similarities and differences between price stabilization in the 1930s and in the 1990s

time series forecasts of international travel demand for australia abstract this paper analyses stationary and non stationary international tourism time series data by formally testing for the presence of unit roots and seasonal unit roots prior to estimation model selection and forecasting various box jenkins autoregressive integrated moving average arima models are estimated over the period 1975 1 1989 4 for tourist arrivals to australia from hong kong malaysia and singapore the mean absolute percentage error and root mean squared error rmse are used as measures of forecast accuracy as the best fitting arima model is found to have the lowest rmse this model is used to obtain post sample forecasts tourist arrivals data for 1990 1 1996 4 are compared with the forecast performance of the arima model for each origin market the fitted arima model forecasts tourist arrivals from singapore for the period 1990 1 1996 4 very well although the arima model outperforms the seasonal arima models for hong kong and malaysia the forecasts of tourist arrivals are not as accurate as in the case of singapore

specific and general taxation of tourism activities evidence from spain abstract this article mainly discusses whether the introduction or increase of tourism taxation should be addressed through specific or general indirect taxation with this aim the paper describes the concept of tourism taxes and presents the several reasons that back their use the paper also offers some numerical exercises comparing the effects of specific and general tourism taxation in spain a developed country with a sizeable tourism industry the article suggests that both specific and general taxes on tourism would be able to yield improvements in terms of revenues and internalization of costs without hampering the economy yet in comparative terms general indirect taxes may be a more feasible equitable and neutral way to obtain tax revenues from tourism activities

doubling fish exports or garment exports which would benefit the fijian economy most evidence from a computable general equilibrium model the need to diversify fiji s export base has been identified as an important avenue for reducing fiji s vulnerabilities in international trade this paper poses the question doubling fish exports or garment exports which would be most beneficial for the fijian economy to achieve the goal of this paper the computable general equilibrium model is used this being at the forefront of research on impact studies the main finding is that when garment exports and fish exports are doubled the benefits to the fijian economy are greater from garment exports suggesting that the latter has stronger linkages with the rest of the economy on the basis of this finding policymakers should divert resources towards sustaining the garment industry whose future is uncertain due to expiring trade agreements and unstable economic policies

tourism welfare and de industrialization in a small open economy this paper investigates the effects of an expansion of tourism on welfare output and factor prices in the host country using a general equilibrium international trade model in the absence of taxes foreign ownership and distortions an increase in foreign visitors will increase welfare only if the price of nontradables increases factor mobility and foreign ownership tend to reduce the gains from tourism while commodity taxes tend to increase them conditions under which an increase in tourism can lead to deindustrialization are also discussed copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

integrating forecasting and cge models the case of tourism in scotland abstract information about current and forecast levels of tourism and its contribution to the economy is important for policy making by businesses and governments traditional forecasting methods can provide reasonable forecasts in the context of predictable changes however forecasting becomes problematic in the context of both predictable changes and less predictable domestic or international shocks this paper demonstrates the ways in which an integrated model combining traditional forecasting methods and quantifiable forecasts from a computable general equilibrium model can be used to examine combinations of events the model is applied to scotland and combines tourism indicators with structural time series forecasting and cge impact analysis results are provided for changes in exchange rates income of major origin countries and a positive shock to tourism demand to demonstrate the integrated model s ability to take account of the multiple events that affect tourism destinations

some cambridge reactions to the general theory david champernowne and joan robinson on full employment this essay analyses early reactions put forward by cambridge economists david champernowne and joan robinson to j m keynes s treatment of the labour market in the general theory champernowne s and robinson s critical reactions represented attempts to fill the gap of the determinants of changes in money wages which they both identified as a weak spot in the argument of the book they rejected albeit for different reasons keynes s notion of the point of full employment as an upper limit defined by the equality between the real wage rate and the marginal disutility of employment instead of keynes s taxonomy of types of unemployment champernowne and robinson introduced respectively the concepts of monetary employment and monetary unemployment and of critical levels of employment copyright 2005 oxford university press

special remedies for special causes involuntary unemployment in keynes political writings this paper analyses the proposals keynes made in his political writings regarding unemployment extending arguments made in the general theory the first issue is the relevance of voluntary unemployment to an understanding of keynes views on structural unemployment the second issue is the connection between on the one hand keynes argument in favour of public works state planning and more generally the socialisation of investment and on the other the analysis of involuntary unemployment made in the general theory emphasis is placed on long term pessimistic expectations and on the market valuation of capital assets copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

labour markets liquidity and monetary policy regimes dans leur etude les auteurs elaborent un modele d equilibre du mecanisme de transmission de la politique monetaire qui fait ressortir les elements de friction relatifs a l acquisition d information sur le marche de la monnaie et a la recherche d emploi

did rabuka s military coups have a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji evidence from vogelsang s structural break test abstract the central aim of this paper is to investigate whether the military coups instigated by major general sitiveni rabuka in 1987 had a permanent effect or a transitory effect on tourist expenditures in fiji to accomplish this aim we use the vogelsang econ theory 13 1997 818 test for one break in linear trending data the vogelsang test reveals 1988 as the year of the break and based on a suite of test statistics recommended by vogelsang we reject the unit root null leading to the conclusion that rabuka s coups had a transitory effect on tourist expenditure in fiji

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

are australia s tourism markets converging in this paper we make an important contribution towards understanding australia s tourism industry by examining whether or not australia s tourism markets are converging we define convergence as the reduction in tourist arrivals differential which is calculated as the difference between total visitor arrivals to a country and visitor arrivals from a particular tourist source market we analyze australia s thirteen major tourist source markets using monthly data over the period january 1991 to september 2003 to test for convergence we use the univariate and panel lagrange multiplier lm tests our main finding is that when we allow for two structural breaks in the data series both univariate and panel lm tests provide strong evidence for convergence of australia s tourism markets this implies that policies aimed at attracting visitor arrivals from any one of australia s thirteen tourist source markets will boost the volume of tourists coming into the country

common trends and common cycles the existence of a serial correlation common feature among the first differences of a set of i 1 variables implies the existence of a common cycle in the beveridge nelson stock watson decomposition of those variables a test for the existence of common cycles among cointegrated variables is developed the test is used to examine the validity of the common trend common cycle structure implied by flavin s excess sensitivity hypothesis and campbell and mankiw s mixture of rational expectations and rule of thumb hypothesis for consumption and income linear independence between the cointegration and the cofeature vectors is exploited to decompose consumption and income into their trend and cycle components copyright 1993 by john wiley sons ltd

welfare analysis of tax reforms using household data abstract this paper discusses a methodology for calculating the distribution of gains and losses from a policy change using data for a large sample of households estimates are based on the equivalent income function which is money metric utility defined over observable variables this enables calculations to be standardised and a computer program to compute the statistics presented in the paper is available for a general demand system equivalent income is related to measures of deadweight loss and standard errors are computed for each of the welfare measures an application to u k data for 5 895 households is given which simulates a reform that involves eliminating housing subsidies

tourism s taxing times value added tax in europe and denmark abstract in recent times the business council of the world tourism organisation has been concerned at the escalation in the number of tourism taxes and the rates at which tourism is taxed there is a justifiable suspicion that governments are looking at the burgeoning tourist industry not from the rational principles of taxation but simply as a new revenue source particularly as foreign tourists are not voters in the destination the tourism industry has to cope with specific taxes such as a departure tax and general taxation such as value added tax vat this article reviews the principles by which tourism should be taxed and focuses on the different rates of vat in a european context using denmark as a case example a simulation exercise is carried out to examine the hotel sector s claim that a more efficient and equitable economic solution would result from cutting vat

on the diversification observability and measurement of estimation risk this paper reexamines how risk return relationships are affected by investor uncertainty about the exact parameters of the joint rate of return distribution we attempt to clarify results relating to three central issues first we address the issue of diversification focusing on an apt factor model framework second we discuss the observability of estimation risk and describe research experimental designs that should encompass the existence of estimation risk and reveal it in the data finally we suggest exploiting contemporaneous return observations on high and low information securities to aid in the measurement of return parameters for low information securities

is subsidising tourism firms an effective use of public funds abstract this study assesses the impact of state aid on firms in the tourism sector by implementing an accurate micro econometric evaluation of their causal effect analyses consider subsidies allocated by the main regional policy in italy the law 488 1992 during the period 1999 2003 a matching difference in difference mdid estimator is applied considering the presence of selection on observable and non observable factors effects on the tourism sector are compared with those in the manufacturing industry the impacts with respect to different types of tourism destinations where tourism firms operate are also evaluated the results show higher output and employment growth but lower labour productivity dynamics in subsidised firms relative to non subsidised ones the impacts are diverse across types of tourism destinations

tourism in the gambia some issues in development policy abstract the paper deals with a number of issues arising from the design and implementation of tourism policies and programs in the gambia it gives a description of tourism in the gambian economy and discusses the reasons for success in this sector a number of recommendations are put forward related to the need to increase earnings from tourism and to reduce the incidence of black markets the overall conclusion of the paper is that a shift toward more cautious and flexible policies would benefit the tourism sector in the gambia and thus make the programs intended to assist this sector more effective it is on that basis that the country will attract more foreign tourists and improve the standards and quality of products the programs must also be executed in a careful sensitive and planned manner that ensures the cooperation of the local communities

business cycles with costly search and recruiting a business cycle model is developed in which output is traded on lucas phelps islands and labor services on each island are exchanged through costly search and recruiting with transactions externalities the model exhibits persistent involuntary unemployment and inefficient equilibria even though there are no nominal rigidities and no unexploited privately attainable gains from trade it also exhibits employment fluctuations without any real wage fluctuations it yields a lucas aggregate supply curve to a linear approximation it also implies that the natural rate of unemployment depends positively upon the variability and persistence of relative price shocks

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

separating the effects of aggregate and sectoral shocks with estimates from a markov switching search model abstract a two sector stochastic model of labor market search is estimated in order to identify aggregate and sectoral shocks which impact upon the recruitment intensity decisions of firms separation of aggregate and sectoral recruitment effects is achieved through the use of data for two canadian regions which were affected in opposite directions by recent resource price shocks the results of the estimation process suggest that sectoral shocks can have significant quantitative effects on unemployment duration and the unemployment rate

an applied general equilibrium analysis of the economic effects of tourism in a quite small quite open economy a computable general equilibrium model is used to project the effects of tourism on the industrial and regional structures of the australian economy the most striking conclusion is that queensland usually thought to be the most tourism oriented of the australian states would be a net loser from an economy wide expansion of tourism as well as having a relatively large share of its gsp accounted for by tourist oriented activities queensland is also relatively heavily dependent on agriculture and mining traditional export sectors which are crowded out by the expansion of international tourism

mass layoffs and unemployment abstract mass layoffs give rise to groups of unemployed workers who possess similar characteristics and therefore may learn from one another s experience searching for a new job two factors lead them to exert too little effort in equilibrium the first is an information externality searchers fail to take into account the value of their experience to others the second is an incentive to free ride each worker would like others to experiment and reveal information concerning the location of productive jobs together these forces imply that in equilibrium the natural rate of unemployment is too high

cointegration analysis of quarterly tourism demand by hong kong and singapore for australia hong kong and singapore are two of the most important and fastest growing markets for tourists to australia the purpose of this paper is to investigate movements in the long run demand for tourist travel by these two origin countries for australia some of the leading macroeconomic variables examined to explain tourism demand are incomes in hong kong and singapore tourism prices in australia and transportation costs and exchange rates between the two countries and australia seasonally unadjusted quarterly data are used for hong kong for the period 1975 1 1996 4 and for 1980 4 1996 4 for singapore several proxy variables are used for the incomes of tourists from hong kong and singapore to explain quarterly tourist arrivals to australia the augmented dickey fuller test for unit roots is examined in the univariate framework and johansen s maximum likelihood procedure is used to test for cointegration and to estimate the number of cointegrating vectors error correction models are estimated to exp

an intertemporal general equilibrium analysis of financial crowding out a policy model and an application to australia abstract this paper constructs a two period perfect foresight general equilibrium model that analyzes crowding out private investment is debt financed while government deficits are financed by money and debt the existence of equilibrium is demonstrated and the model is applied to australia for 1981 1982 the last years for which australia had a fixed exchange rate a benchmark solution is derived and two counterfactual simulations are carried out small increases in real government spending are found not to lead to crowding out while an increase in the debt financed portion of the government s budget deficit does lead to crowding out

measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in italy abstractenvironmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers in general terms this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently so as to increase economic and human wealth this clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered bearing this in mind this article considers economic and ecological performance together by applying data envelopment analysis and the malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 italian regions from 2004 to 2011 the results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two furthermore this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional economic and environmental efficiency the results of the forecasting analysis show that the north south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the r

evaluating tourism s economic effects new and old approaches abstract techniques such as multiplier analysis and input output analysis are still very commonly used to make estimates of the economic impact of changes in tourism expenditure these techniques have serious limitations and as a result alternative techniques have been developed to address the problems computable general equilibrium cge models are now extensively used especially in australia the uk the us and canada to estimate economic impacts of a wide variety of changes and policies across most sectors cge techniques have been used in the tourism context but so far not extensively economic evaluation in tourism thus fails to achieve best practice the paper presents arguments in support of cge modelling as the preferred technique in analysing the economic impacts of tourism and discusses its potential to drive future research in this area that is more relevant to real world tourism destinations

modelling labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialising economy this paper investigates labour market responses to trade liberalisation in an industrialising country short and long run responses of employment and wages are examined using a specific factor trade model which underpins the empirical work employment and wage equations are estimated using dynamic panel techniques for importable and exportable sectors in mauritius and for a period covering both the pre and post liberalisation regimes the empirical testing finds some support for the theoretical predictions of differential responses between sectors increases in female participation however appear to have dampened the adjustment burdens of liberalisation on importables there is relatively little evidence available about the effects of trade induced shifts in the composition of demand on inter industry employment and wage levels in developing countries analyses of the factor content of imports and exports suggest that a shift from import substitution is to export promotion ep policies will typically in the case of a developing country expand the more labour intensive industries increase labour demand overall and drive up real wages in the long run but trade liberalisation and increased foreign competition may not only affect the composition of the tradeables goods sector i e the distribution between importables and exportables they may also affect both the efficiency with which all firms use factors including labour and the distribution of output within a sector between more and less efficient firms thus the net long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment will depend upon the balance of structural and efficiency effects which cannot be identified from analyses of the composition of trade alone further we must also recognise that the short and long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment and wages may diverge the divergence depending on the degree of factor mobility and the competitiveness of labour markets the aim of this paper is to model labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialisingz country it will do so using panel data evidence for mauritius an economy that has undergone significant trade liberalisation and transformation during the 1980s indeed mauritius is viewed simultaneously as a successful liberaliser and an economy with extensive government intervention in the labour market it provides a valuable test base

assessing the importance of international tourism for the turkish economy a social accounting matrix analysis abstract the international tourism sector has grown rapidly in turkey since the 1980s and turkey ranks among the top ten countries in terms of tourist arrivals and receipts previous studies on international tourism in turkey are partial equilibrium studies which emphasized the importance of the sector for foreign exchange earnings employment creation and economic growth the social accounting matrix sam modeling approach is superior to partial equilibrium analysis as it takes into account intersectoral linkages this paper analyzes the contribution of international tourism to the turkish economy using two sams for 1996 and 2002 respectively two analyses are conducted using the sam impact model i sectoral comparison of gdp elasticities and ii sam impact analysis of international tourism on output value added and employment the results show that the gdp elasticity of international tourism is relatively low and the impact of foreign tourist expenditures on domestic production value added gdp and employment in turkey are modest the results imply the possibility of leakage of foreign tourist expenditures out of the economy

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

search unemployment and age abstract we examine a search and matching model of the labor market with overlapping generations of workers in this model we focus on the effects of the finite lifetime of workers as a result of finite lifetime very old workers with the same productivity as younger workers generally earn less a market solution with nash bargained wages is never optimal as old workers search too long compared to the efficient solution we also examine the effects of policy measures such as hiring subsidies or unemployment insurance on employment labor market institutions have a differential impact for different age groups

labour market reform and the macroeconomic efficiency of the labour market in australia this paper assesses the effects of a decade and a half of labour market reform in australia on labour market flexibility at the macroeconomic level increased labour market flexibility is interpreted as reduced structural unemployment and enhanced efficiency of matching we use shifts in the beveridge curve as a measure of changes in labour market efficiency following solow r what is labour market flexibility what is it good for keynes lecture british academy london december 1997 time series analysis of unemployment vacancies and other relevant variables strongly suggests that changes in the efficiency of labour market matching over the period reflect the cyclical effects of hysteresis rather than the effects of labour market reform copyright 2004 oxford university press

tourism and economic development the beach disease abstract this paper analyses empirically the danger of a dutch disease effect in tourism dependent countries in the long run data on 134 countries of the world over the period 1970 2007 is used in a first step the long run relationship between tourism and economic growth is analysed in a cross country setting the results are then checked in a panel data framework on gdp per capita levels that allows to control for reverse causality non linearity and interactive effects it is found that there is no danger of a beach disease effect on the contrary tourism dependent countries do not face real exchange rate distortion and deindustrialisation but higher than average economic growth rates investment in physical capital such as for instance transport infrastructure is complementary to investment in tourism

comment lucas on involuntary unemployment keynes distinguishes three concepts voluntary frictional and keynesian involuntary unemployment frictional unemployment is a classical form of involuntary unemployment not voluntary as lucas suggests and reflects the marshallian rather than walrasian treatment of time and equilibrium lucas contradicts both keynes and pigou in asserting that there are always immediate vacancies for unskilled labour and abstracts from the very problem that keynes seeks to address if voluntary unemployment is re defined appropriately as de vroey helpfully suggests elsewhere the prefix involuntary is dispensable not because all unemployment is voluntary as lucas would have it but because it is all involuntary copyright 2006 oxford university press

job search and cyclical unemployment a model economy is described that integrates job search and signal extraction analysis equilibrium differs from search models without signal extraction in that even with a fixed real sector unemployment fluctuates stochastically it differs from standard signal extraction models because search introduces persistence in fact unemployment follows a second order difference equation with coefficient that are functions of current and lagged values of the stochastic shocks thus the model has the potential to mimic actual business cycle data despite the fact that the underlying shocks are independently and identically distributed policy implications are discussed

lucas on involuntary unemployment the aim of this paper is to examine critically lucas arguments against keynes s general theory and in particular against keynes s concept of involuntary unemployment it comprises two main parts in the first i question lucas s claim that keynes betrayed the equilibrium discipline by freeing himself from the postulates of optimising behaviour and market clearing in the second i discuss lucas three arguments against the involuntary unemployment concept first that there is no rationale for drawing a distinction between two sorts of unemployment second that every economic outcome features voluntarity and involuntarity jointly and third that alternatives to unemployment are always present

casino tourism economic inequality and housing bubbles abstract potential linkages among tourism inequality and housing are addressed for an integrated analysis in this paper with macao treated as a typical case casino tourism albeit performing as a major key to local economic growth is ultimately vulnerable to external shocks to gambling demand as evidenced by the current sharp downturn in macao we find that faster gaming growth leads to higher income inequality while at the same time both factors are responsible for soaring housing bubbles which constitute the very source of social tensions as in macao casino tourism if not well managed may not be a panacea for all development goals the implication for policy derived from this study is that macao must deal with underlying issues rather than apply palliative measures its market failures may necessitate government interventions to ensure social equity and sustainable tourism

the association between disclosure distress and failure the quality of corporate disclosures has drawn increasing levels of criticism from congress and the sec a subject of particularly intense scrutiny and action is the management s discussion and analysis md a this narrative intended to provide an inside perspective on the reported results of the firm is particularly important when attempting to evaluate the investment prospects of the marginal or poorly performing firm however managers may restrict the information content of the disclosure raising potential concerns about ethical behavior in this study we employ a proprietary instrument to measure the quality of md a disclosures for a sample of firms entering financial distress we evaluate the disclosure behavior of these firms in an effort to determine whether changes in the disclosure appear to be motivated primarily by economic or ethical concerns we find on average that firms increase disclosure quality in the year of initial distress however sustained increases in disclosure quality are limited to firms that subsequently recover from the distress the results suggest that observed changes in disclosure are driven primarily by economic considerations rather than ethical ones especially in good economic times

property rights renewable resources and economic development this paper analyzes the role of endogenous property rights in the development of an open resource based economy i incorporate renewable resources and endogenous decisions on property rights into a convex growth model with the formal and informal sectors i find that along the transition path to steady state property rights enforcement is not constant but improves with time as well as involves intermediate property rights specification between open access and perfect property rights international trade and labor market are driving these endogenous changes property rights improve with favorable terms of trade when the economy exports resource services and stronger property rights help maintain the resource stock by deterring illegal harvest this pushes labor away from the informal harvest sector toward greater participation in the formal sector of the economy in turn more labor participation in the formal sector along with capital formation increase the country s output and consumption overall with an open economy and well functioning institutions renewable resources have a positive impact on economic growth

oil prices tourism income and economic growth a structural var approach for european mediterranean countries abstract in this study a structural var model is employed to investigate the relationship among oil price shocks tourism variables and economic indicators in four european mediterranean countries in contrast with the current tourism literature we distinguish between three oil price shocks namely supply side aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks overall our results indicate that oil specific demand shocks contemporaneously affect inflation and the tourism sector equity index whereas these shocks do not seem to have any lagged effects by contrast aggregate demand oil price shocks exercise a lagged effect either directly or indirectly to tourism generated income and economic growth the paper does not provide any evidence that supply side shocks trigger any responses from the remaining variables results are important for tourism agents and policy makers should they need to create hedging strategies against future oil price movements or plan for economic policy developments

tourism and economic development a survey this article surveys the literature on tourism and economic development identifying the contribution that tourism can make to development including foreign currency income and employment and the costs that it entails single equation and system of equations models for estimating tourism demand are provided indicating developing countries potential to benefit from increasing expenditure on tourism but their susceptibility to deterioration in price competitiveness the main sectors of tourism supply transportation tour operators travel agents and accommodation are examined and the importance of cross country integration between firms is highlighted the article argues that many of the problems associated with the use of environmental resources for tourism stem from market failure and it considers methods for increasing sustainably the returns from them

modelling multivariate international tourism demand and volatility international tourism demand which is typically measured as tourist arrivals to australia has experienced dramatic fluctuations in recent years due to changes in the economic financial and political environment however variations in tourism demand specifically the conditional variance or volatility have not previously been investigated in the tourism literature an analysis of such volatility is essential for investigating the effects of shocks in tourism demand models this paper models the conditional mean and conditional variance of the logarithm of the monthly tourist arrival rate from the four leading tourism source countries to australia namely japan new zealand uk and usa using three multivariate static or constant conditional correlation ccc volatility models specifically the symmetric ccc mgarch model of rev econ stat 72 1990 498 symmetric vector arma garch model of econ theory 19 2003 278 and asymmetric vector arma agarch model of australasian meeting of the econometric society brisbane australia 2002 monthly data from july 1975 to 2000 are used in the empirical analysis the results suggest the presence of interdependent effects in the conditional variances between the four leading countries and asymmetric effects of shocks in two of the four countries this is an important result as it emphasizes interdependencies between major tourism source countries as well as the asymmetric effects of positive and negative shocks in tourism demand the estimated ccc matrices for the three models are not substantially different from each other which confirms the robustness of the estimates to alternative specifications of the multivariate conditional variance

foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism evidence from the caribbean there exist legal channels for informational lobbying of u s policymakers by foreign principals foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues this paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of caribbean tourism and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by caribbean principals and u s tourist arrivals to caribbean destinations a variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association the policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries

assessing indirect tax reform in a tourism dependent developing country summary the paper investigates the effects of reform of the current structure of indirect taxes in mauritius a relatively tourism dependent economy it uses a computable general equilibrium model to explore the relative efficiency of changing sales tax rates on tourism and nontourism related sectors and allowing for equity considerations the efficiency of tax reforms are also distinguished for cases where tourist arrivals are exogenously set and where they endogenously adjust to changes in relative prices the simulation results show that the tourism sectors are currently undertaxed additionally taxing tourism sectors is found to be the most socially efficient means of raising tax revenue

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

taxing tourism in developing countries abstract although tourism is an important industry in many developing countries where tax revenues are often in short supply surprisingly little attention has been paid to the taxation of the tourist industry this paper argues that in principle there is a strong economic case in many but not all countries for taxing tourism more than at present but that the nature of the industry and administrative difficulties severely limit what can be done in practice this analysis and a review of the fiscal instruments available to most developing countries suggest three main conclusions first more attention should be paid to introducing adequate charging policies where possible second special taxes on hotel accommodation are generally the key to tourist taxation and third there is little reason to provide special incentives for investment in the tourist industry

unemployment persistence does the size of the shock matter one of the stylized facts of unemployment is that shifts in its mean rate between decades and half decades account for most of its variance in this paper we use a statistical analysis based on markov switching regression models to identify the dates of infrequent changes in the mean of the unemployment rate series of fifteen countries we find that in most countries unemployment persistence is much reduced once the infrequently changing mean rate induced by large shocks to unemployment has been removed we conclude that the observed persistence in unemployment appears to be consistent with multiple equilibria models and models with an endogeneous natural rate 1998 john wiley sons ltd

are shocks to tourism transitory at business cycle horizons the goal of this article is to propose a theoretical framework based on a macro model that can be used to examine the relative importance of permanent and transitory shocks in explaining variations in tourist expenditure and gross domestic product gdp at business cycle horizons we estimate the model for australia our findings reveal a common trend and common cycle relationship among tourist expenditure and gdp and the variance decomposition analysis of shocks reveals that at business cycle horizons permanent shocks explain the bulk of the variations in output while transitory shocks explain the bulk of the variations in tourist expenditure

the economic impact of on screen tourism the case of the lord of the rings and the hobbit the economic impacts of on screen tourism are particularly interesting and research in this area can provide useful information to governments making decisions regarding subsidising film production and forming relevant marketing strategies no reliable and systematic approach for measuring the economic impacts of on screen tourism currently exists and this study is the first to evaluate the overall economic impacts of on screen tourism by comparing the impacts of two series of films the lord of the rings and the hobbit both filmed in new zealand a new approach combining econometric and computable general equilibrium modelling techniques is used in the assessment the results show that the lord of the rings did not significantly impact on the tourism and economy of new zealand while the hobbit trilogy had a significant positive impact which may be due to effective marketing strategies and media convergence

a computable general equilibrium model of the southern region of taiwan the impact of the tainan science based industrial park the primary modelling tools used to analyse regional economic issues include econometric forecasting models fixed price input output i o multi sector models social accounting matrix sam and computable general equilibrium cge models cge models combine the advantages of econometric i o models and sam strengthening the theoretical basis of the modelling effort and thus enabling more precise policy analysis current cge literature includes models used to analyse international trade tax reform energy and environment issues however application of this technique on a regional scale is rare in the scientific literature in this paper a small regional computable general equilibrium model is constructed and applied to analyse the economic impact of constructing tainan science based industrial park tsbip locating in southern taiwan the research results provide a valuable reference for decision makers in formulating industrial and regional policies as well as helping business managers with strateg

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

meade s general theory model a geometric reprise james meade s 1937 two sector formalization of keynes s general theory is reconsidered in some detail this paper developes a geometric scheme that facilitates the use of comparative statics in working with the meade model to demonstrate the richness of its possibilities the paper also argues that the meade model might have provided a superior starting point for the development of algebraic interpretations of keynes s system when compared with john r hicks s is ll framework particularly since the meade model affords a direct bridge toward james tobin s monetary transmission mechanism copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

globalisation and factor returns in competitive markets abstract the standard competitive trade model extended to include many goods and factors is used to analyze the effect of goods and factor market integration on average international disparities in the real returns of internationally immobile factors it is shown that goods market integration decreases international real return differentials for all factors we derive sufficient conditions for this result to hold for the subgroup of internationally immobile factors as well while there is a presumption for similar results to hold with international factor market integration we show that this is true for international migration but in general not for international investment

spillover effects in long haul visitors between two regions gooroochurn n and hanley a 2005 spillover effects in long haul visitors between two regions regional studies 39 727 739 a new body called tourism ireland funded jointly by the british and irish governments has been set up to promote tourism for the entire island of ireland this study investigates whether such an initiative is mutually beneficial for the republic of ireland roi and northern ireland ni it is argued that joint promotion of the island is viable only if interregional tourism demand spillovers are generated a spillover arises when tourists who visit the roi also visit ni and vice versa the interconnectedness between the two regions long haul visitor demand was investigated empirically and it was found that spillovers are significant albeit asymmetric ni tourism demand rises 3 2 for every 10 increase in roi tourism demand while the latter increases 1 1 for every 10 increase in ni demand

differential information and security market equilibrium we propose a simple model of equilibrium asset pricing in which there are differences in the amounts of information available for developing inferences about the returns parame ters of alternative securities in contrast with earlier work we show that parameter uncer tainty or estimation risk can have an effect upon market equilibrium under reasonable conditions securities for which there is relatively little information are shown to have relatively higher systematic risk when that risk is properly measured ceteris paribus the initially very limited model is shown to be robust with respect to relaxation of a number of its principal assumptions we provide theoretical support for the empirical examination of at least three proxies for relative information period of listing number of security returns observations available and divergence of analyst opinion

business cycles and labor market search the quantitative implications of labor market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real business cycle model incorporating labor market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions in particular hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls in addition the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons overall the empirical results suggest that the labor market search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism copyright 1996 by american economic association

hicks a teoria geral e a teoria geral generalizada despite the most common interpretation of john hicks s formalization of the general theory that it was mainly oriented to achieve mathematical elegance this paper shows that hicks s results are based on theoretical arguments and specific causality relations hicks acknowledges the importance of the liquidity preference doctrine and examines the effects of investment on income the multiplier as well as the effects of income on investment the accelerator our interpretation of hicks s formulation and especially of the role of the rate of interest rate in his paper avails the understanding of the success of the so called neoclassical synthesis

hicks s contribution to keynesian economics phe purpose of this paper is to examine hicks s contribution to macroeconomic theory in those respects in which it constitutes a response to or a development of the work of john maynard keynes thus while it is narrower in scope than an attempt to assess hicks s contribution to macroeconomic theory it is broader in scope than an attempt to see hicks as keynes s interpreter for an interpreter is judged only by the faithfulness with which he translates the material given to him he is not required to extend recast criticize or reconstruct that material we shall be concerned then with what hicks got out of keynes s writings and what he did with it not with what was really there i therefore shall not be concerned with the authenticity or doctrinal purity of hicks s keynesianism in considering hicks s contribution to keynesian economics i shall be concerned with two distinct but related matters first i shall be concerned in sections ii and iii with hicks s response to and in particular his criticisms of what keynes himself actually wrote also however i shall in section iv be concerned with hicks s contribution to those ideas that eventually entered the public domain as keynesian economics quite irrespective of whether those ideas accurately reflect what keynes may or may not have had in mind at some crucial juncture of his career i should emphasize that these two concerns are intended to consist simply of a narrower and a broader one they do not involve a contrast between a profound and intellectually challenging economics of keynes on the one hand to be set against a vulgar and degenerate keynesian economics on the other accordingly i shall be using the term keynesian in a robust sense i use it in full recognition of the possibility of diverse shades of opinion and of extreme or borderline cases on the understanding that it is what all these have in common that is important

the estimation of frictional unemployment a stochastic frontier approach this paper reports an estimate of the frictional unemployment rate in u s manufacturing that is derived from a parametric statistical method for estimating stochastic frontiers the steady state perfect foresight solution to an estimated employment growth frontier provides a locus of technically efficient frictional rates of unemployment the mean frictional unemployment rate during the sample period is estimated to be 3 7 percent of the manufacturing labor force this estimate conforms closely to an estimate of 3 5 percent that is derived from manufacturing sector data presented by david m lilien 1980 for roughly the same time period copyright 1991 by mit press

keynes lucas and involuntary unemployment a reply to hayes in this response to mark hayes s criticism of his article lucas on involuntary unemployment the author insists on the need to draw a distinction between labour rationing a market outcome and unemployment the activity of job seeking economic theory is mainly concerned with the former yet the issue of the voluntarity versus the involuntarity of unemployment pertains to unemployment as an activity failing to make this distinction cannot but lead to semantic confusion

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

fiscal dependence on trade taxes and trade policy reform the article focuses on fiscal implications of structural adjustment loans sals from an a priori standpoint and by reference to the experience of five countries three of these countries have had revenue enhancement after trade policy reforms and the other two cases experienced revenue depletion the central point which emerges from the study is that it is not clear that trade liberalisation leads to fiscal enhancement or fiscal depletion both a priori the orising and country analyses demonstrate that a range of outcomes is possible depending upon initial conditions and the components of any reform package

unemployment dynamics and labour market tightness an empirical evaluation of matching function models the implications of matching function models for the relationship between labour market tightness and the transition probability into employment are summarized these implications are then tested using monthly data for three canadian provinces british columbia ontario and quebec testing methods use flexible regression techniques so as to reduce the effect of any extraneous restrictions the results show rough concordance between theoretical assumptions and empirical facts evidence of non linearity in the estimated relationships favours a search theoretic model of labour markets over one based on queues and some quantitative results offer guidance to those using calibrated search models in theoretical analysis

meade s general theory model stability and the role of expectations this paper develops a one sector version of james meade s keynesian system 1937 in contrast to the traditional is lm model expectations are endogenous and the valuation of capital by financial markets plays a central role in meade s model the model formalizes keynes s views on the role of the stock market and the sensitivity of long term expectations to current events with sufficiently elastic expectations wage flexibility causes a downward spiral of wages prices and output an outcome james tobin 1975 argued may represent keynes s contribution better than an underemployment equilibrium sustained by rigid wages copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

a paradigm shift to a new strategy for small island economies embracing demand side economics for value enhancement and long term economic stability abstract the article answers three interrelated questions pertaining to small island economies and tourism development under the condition of globalization 1 why is tourism relevant for small island economies 2 why is a supply perspective inappropriate for these economies and 3 why is a demand perspective more appropriate for small island economies in the era of globalization empirical realities indicate that small islands have performed well in specializing as tourist destinations despite their size constraints and resulting disadvantage in economic terms the caribbean region is an appropriate proxy for small island economies however globalization may be taking its toll on sectoral specialization in the caribbean as a development strategy the supply side strategy seems to have lost its effectiveness to reverse this trend the study proposes the implementation of new tourism strategies based on a demand focused approach to sustain value enhancement these strategies have important managerial and policy implications

the transhipment problem smuggling and welfare in paraguay abstract this paper studies the effects of contraband on resource allocation and welfare using parguayan data a major portion of exports from this economy involves the transhipment of goods from third countries through paraguay to brazil and argentina to avoid trade taxes both explicit and implicit via quantitative restrictions and multiple exchange rates using international and paraguayan databases for 1990 we calculate that contraband accounted for 58 of exports and 31 of imports finally we estimate that such trade increased welfare by 2 1 of gdp

price expectations capital accumulation and employment lindahl s macroeconomics from the 1920s to the 1950s erik lindahl s approach to macroeconomics focused on the non neutrality of monetary policy in the short and the long run and on the denial of the existence of natural rates of interest and unemployment from the 1920s until his death in 1960 lindahl advocated the use of norms for monetary policy to fight inflation and deflation precisely because he would not rely on the market system s return to natural rates making use of hitherto unexplored material this paper analyses the development of lindahl s thinking about price level changes investment and employment from the 1920s to the 1950s copyright 2006 oxford university press

taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism a welfare enhancing solution to dutch disease abstract using a combined analysis of a general equilibrium and a partial equilibrium this study models the impacts of a combined policy tool based on taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism in a tourism dependent destination the results suggest that such a policy tool while widely discussed in economics literature may not be suitable for a tourism destination as it might have adverse effects on local welfare