the historical evolution of china s tourism development policies 1949 2013 a quantitative research approach abstract starting from the multi dimensional analysis of the 379 tourism policy documents issued by central government and related departments and ministries from 1949 to 2013 this article analyzes the evolution of china s tourism development policies since the founding of china using a perspective the research results show that 1 tourism policy in china has evolved from being based on the administrative allocation of resources to a market based allocation of resources constrained by administrative powers 2 the targets for tourism policy have always been developed with the strategic objectives of national economic and social development in mind these can be divided into four stages servicing foreign affairs developing the business economy providing a new growth point in the economy and becoming a national strategic pillar industry 3 tourism policy is mainly used for micro supervision tourism policy formulation lacks the ability to macro control the factors of production such as capital land technology and talent 4 increasing numbers of government departments are becoming involved in formulating tourism policy but policy efforts have become more stable recent studies suggest that the effective operation of the tourism economy is highly dependent on the institutional arrangements within the wider social economic system thus when the tourism law was enacted the development of the chinese tourism industry entered a new stage in this new stage technological advances market demand and the competition and cooperative relationships among companies will jointly lead innovation in the tourism industry innovation such as new products and new business models will in turn be the base for tourism industry development furthermore industrial macroeconomic regulation and public service will become the basic elements of government tourism management under the new law

more on estimation risk and simple rules for optimal portfolio selection for the risk averse investor consideration of estimation risk is important in selecting an expected utility maximizing portfolio it has previously been shown that the composition of the tangency portfolio is unaffected by the recognition of estimation risk if the full covariance model is used alternatively if the market model is used the composition of the tangency portfolio has been shown to be affected by the recognition of estimation risk however as is demonstrated in this paper the effect will generally not be as substantive as previously believed and in many situations can be safely ignored in order to determine the composition and location of an efficient frontier from which an optimal portfolio will be selected the investor must employ estimates of expected returns variances and covariances for the set of securities under consideration if the investor simply treats the estimated parameter values for the securities as true parameter values then estimation risk will have been ignored and as shown by barry 1 and klein and bawa 14 15 a suboptimal portfolio will most likely have been selected bawa brown and klein 6 and klein and bawa 14 discuss the effects of estimation risk on the selection of an optimal portfolio from a set of risky assets and note that the location but not the composition of the efficient frontier changes when estimation risk is recognized if security returns are generated by a stationary multivariate normal distribution for which the investor has a diffuse prior furthermore brown 8 has shown these results to be robust for severe misspecification of the underlying multivariate distribution of returns e g assuming it to be normal when in actuality it is student t with small degrees of freedom this paper is concerned with the effects of estimation risk on the composition of the tangency portfolio derived from a set of risky assets and a risk free asset under the assumption that the investor has a diffuse prior 1 barry 2 bawa and brown 4 and brown 7 have shown analytically that the composition of the tangency portfolio is unaffected by estimation risk if the full covariance model is used chen and brown 10 have expanded upon the work of brown 9 and have argued that if security returns are generated by the market model then the composition of the tangency portfolio will be substantively different when estimation risk is recognized

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

did the commodity price spike increase rural poverty evidence from a long run panel in bangladesh we assess the effects of the dramatic rise in agricultural commodity prices during 2007 2008 on income dynamics and poverty among rural households in bangladesh a unique panel data set allows us to put the effects of recent events in the context of long run trends in income and poverty we use data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in bangladesh collected in four waves in 1988 2000 2004 and 2008 nargis and hossain nargis n hossain m 2006 income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in bangladesh 1988 2004 agric econ 35 425 435 analysed income dynamics and poverty incidence for the first three waves finding a declining trend in both the incidence and severity of poverty aided in particular by human capital development and off farm employment opportunities we update and extend the analysis to include data collected in 2008 at the height of a spike in agricultural prices we find that the price of a balanced food basket increased by more than 50 during 2000 2008 while household income rose only 15 as a result the incidence and severity of rural poverty in bangladesh sunk to pre 2000 levels during 2004 2008 thus the price spikes in 2007 2008 helped push an additional 13 million people into poverty in rural bangladesh moreover we find that the determinants of poverty have not been time invariant in particular agricultural production which had previously been associated with a higher incidence of poverty served as a hedge against higher food prices during 2004 2008

portfolio selection under institutional procedures for short selling normative and market equilibrium considerations abstract in view of the acceptance of short selling of stocks as an investment tool in the portfolio context by a growing number of institutional investors in recent years the present study considers both normative and market equilibrium aspects of portfolio selection with short selling under the full information covariance structure of security returns the study accurately captures institutional procedures for short selling without sacrificing analytical tractability while short selling enhances the portfolio s risk return trade off from a normative perspective the equilibrium analysis reveals that there is a continuum of market clearing prices within two boundaries for each security economic implications of the equilibrium pricing relationship are also explored in the study

behavioral responses to risk in rural china does risk perpetuate poverty in a credit constrained economy jalan and ravallion study portfolio and other behavioral responses to measured risk using household panel data for rural china one quarter of wealth is held in unproductive liquid forms but only a small share of this appears to be a precaution against income risk the authors estimate that eliminating income risk would reduce the share of wealth held in liquid form by less than 1 percentage point moreover that effect is confined largely to middle income groups high income households do not it seems need to hold unproductive cautionary wealth and the poor probably cannot afford to do so the authors find no evidence that income risk discourages schooling but risk does inhibit the out migration of labor generally the results provide only limited support for the idea that uninsured risks promote unproductive portfolio behavior in this setting there is such an effect but it is small in magnitude and cannot be deemed an important cause of poverty

a household model of on farm storage under price risk we present an agricultural household model of consumption storage savings and labor decisions and argue that food crop storage under price risk cannot be fully explained by risk taking or speculative behavior alone as the commodity storage literature suggests often and especially in the case of small farmers the explanation lies in the household s aversion to risk and in food security considerations the empirical analysis using icrisat quarterly panel data from shirapur provides evidence against risk neutral preferences we find that risk response is particularly significant in the storage and labor decisions of small farm households

testing theories of consumption behavior using information on aggregate shocks income seasonality and rainfall in rural india we develop an integrated framework for testing theories of consumption behavior by examining how agricultural households in rural india respond to anticipated and unanticipated seasonal income fluctuations using information on village level rainfall surprises we estimate idiosyncratic unanticipated income shocks by allowing weather risk to impact households differently depending on observable characteristics in applying our methodology to unique panel data on consumption debt and intrahousehold gift exchanges we address a number of shortcomings in previous tests of theories of consumption behavior yet we find no evidence against the hypothesis that households smooth idiosyncratic fluctuations in their income our approach also uncovers several interesting features of rural credit and insurance markets

simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity i study a simple widely applicable approach to handling the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear unobserved effects models rather than attempting to obtain the joint distribution of all outcomes of the endogenous variables i propose finding the distribution conditional on the initial value and the observed history of strictly exogenous explanatory variables the approach is flexible and results in simple estimation strategies for at least three leading dynamic nonlinear models probit tobit and poisson regression i treat the general problem of estimating average partial effects and show that simple estimators exist for important special cases copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

precautionary saving under liquidity constraints evidence from rural pakistan this paper investigates precautionary saving under liquidity constraints in pakistan using household panel data in particular while we estimates kimball s 1990 prudence parameter we deviate from dynan s 1993 framework by explicitly considering liquidity constraints as in zeldes 1989 by doing so we attempt to differentiate the standard precautionary saving caused by uncertainty from the one due to liquidity constraints furthermore endogenous liquidity constraints are considered to resolve issues of selection biases in this study we document substantial evidence of the presence of precautionary saving in pakistan more specifically the estimated prudence is significantly higher for liquidity constrained households as compared with unconstrained ones the results support the emerging view that facilitating saving may often be more important than finding better ways of lending to the poor

portfolio optimization with factors scenarios and realistic short positions this paper presents fast algorithms for calculating mean variance efficient frontiers when the investor can sell securities short as well as buy long and when a factor and or scenario model of covariance is assumed currently fast algorithms for factor scenario or mixed factor and scenario models exist but except for a special case of the results reported here apply only to portfolios of long positions factor and scenario models are used widely in applied portfolio analysis and short sales have been used increasingly as part of large institutional portfolios generally the critical line algorithm cla traces out mean variance efficient sets when the investor s choice is subject to any system of linear equality or inequality constraints versions of cla that take advantage of factor and or scenario models of covariance gain speed by greatly simplifying the equations for segments of the efficient set these same algorithms can be used unchanged for the long short portfolio selection problem provided a certain condition on the constraint set holds this condition usually holds in practice

capital asset prices with and without negative holdings prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 7 1990 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

consumption versus asset smoothing testing the implications of poverty trap theory in burkina faso abstract despite solid theoretical foundations for the notion that poor borrowing constrained households will intertemporally manage assets to smooth consumption the consumption smoothing hypothesis has not always withstood empirical scrutiny this paper reassesses the intertemporal asset management problem with a poverty trap model and shows that we would expect to see asset smoothing not consumption smoothing in the neighborhood of critical asset levels at which optimal accumulation behavior bifurcates we then employ threshold estimation techniques to empirically confirm the co existence of consumption and asset smoothing regimes using a household panel data set from west africa households above the estimated threshold almost completely insulate their consumption from weather shocks whereas those below the threshold do not these results not only indirectly provide evidence of the existence of poverty traps but also speak to the level and incidence of the costs of uninsured risk

tourism policy a midsummer night s dream abstract the changing nature of the tourism industry with its move away from mass tourism towards greater market segmentation use of new technologies differentiation of the product and adoption of new management styles demands a change in the substance of governments tourism policies this article reviews the development of tourism policy from pure promotion to product development to the current goal of maintaining competitiveness it argues for a more balanced partnership between private public and voluntary sectors and discusses various national plans that may serve as a model for future policy making the trend in some quarters towards privatization of policy programmes is considered unsustainable

active portfolio management with benchmarking adding a value at risk constraint abstract we examine the impact of adding a value at risk var constraint to the problem of an active manager who seeks to outperform a benchmark while minimizing tracking error variance tev by using the model of roll 1992 a mean variance analysis of tracking error journal of portfolio management 18 13 22 we obtain three main results first portfolios on the constrained mean tev boundary still exhibit three fund separation but the weights of the three funds when the constraint binds differ from those in roll s model second the constraint mitigates the problem that when an active manager seeks to outperform a benchmark using the mean tev model he or she selects an inefficient portfolio finally when short sales are disallowed the extent to which the constraint reduces the optimal portfolio s efficiency loss can still be notable but is smaller than when short sales are allowed

the information content of short interest a natural experiment an increase in the cost of selling short should increase the bearish information content of short interest announcements by driving relatively uninformed short sellers out of the market we extend the diamond and verrecchia 1987 model to include short selling against the box and test the extended model using a natural experiment based around the taxpayer relief act of 1997 tra97 tra97 made short selling more costly for those shorting against the box consistent with the implications of our extended model this increase in short selling costs strengthens the negative relationship between short interest and subsequent stock price performance post tra97

short selling and efficient sets the effect of short selling on the composition and location of the efficient set has been analyzed in a variety of ways however the situation typically facing investors where the initial margin requirement is less than 100 percent and the riskfree interest rate that is paid on the short proceeds is less than the rate paid on initial margin has not previously been considered the elton gruber padberg algorithm 1976 1978 subject to certain modifications is shown here to be capable of identifying the efflcient set under such conditions when harry markowitz 1952 developed the notion of efficient sets as a method of identifying an investor s optimal portfolio he did so in a setting where short selling was prohibited since then the effect of short selling on the composition and location of the efficient set has been considered in a variety of ways for example lintner 1965 suggested that short sales be treated from the perspective of a broker dealer where an amount of money equal to the short proceeds must be put up as initial margin with the short seller receiving riskfree interest on both the short proceeds and the margin alternatively black 1972 and merton 1972 assumed that the short seller did not have to put up any initial margin and that the short seller actually got the use of the short proceeds more recently dyl 1975 has assumed that the short seller must put up initial margin that is less than the short proceeds but receives no interest on either the margin or short proceeds this paper is concerned with the generation of efficient sets where short selling is allowed but with certain restrictions attached to it referred to hereafter as restricted short selling in particular initial margin is required but can be met by depositing interest bearing securities with the brokerage firm where the short seller s account is kept furthermore the model allows the short seller to earn interest on the short proceeds accordingly the model

estimation risk and simple rules for optimal portfolio selection elton gruber and padberg egp 6 7 have recently simplified the process of constructing optimal portfolios by developing simple criteria for optimal portfolio selection which do not involve use of mathematical programming their simple decision rules permit one to determine easily which securities to include in an optimal portfolio and how much to invest in each however in practical applications of theoretical models sample estimators are usually treated as if they were true values of unknown parameters as a result the effect of the standard errors of sample estimators on decision rules are completely ignored bawa brown and klein 1 have shown that what is optimal in the absence of estimation risk is not necessarily optimal or even approximately optimal in the presence of estimation risk moreover brown 4 examined optimal portfolio choice under uncertainty for various portfolio selection procedures the diffuse bayes rule the markowitz certainty equivalent ce rule the aggregation ce rule and the equal weight rule 1 and found that the diffuse bayes rule uniformly dominates the markowitz ce rule in repeated samples for the quadratic utility case as the sample size increases the bayes rule becomes superior to the aggregation ce and the equal weight rules in addition the result holds even where the probability distribution of returns is seriously misspecified thus brown s 4 study has clearly indicated that without taking estimation risk into account portfolio selection rules other than the bayes rule can lead investors to select suboptimal portfolios this paper shows by using the single index model for the return generating process that the simple decision rules for optimal portfolio selection derived by elton gruber and padberg 7 are not identical under the bayesian and the traditional methods of analysis 2 moreover in the case where short sales are not

towards new tourism policies the importance of environmental and sociocultural factors abstract unrestricted tourism growth could lead to the positive economic effects of tourism being outweighed by significant social and environmental disadvantages which could in turn translate the economic benefits into disadvantages this process derives not only from tourism effects per se but also from changes in the social structure this article calls for not merely economic and technical adjustments in policies but for a fundamental political transformation in the conception of tourism and recreation

on the optimal selection of portfolios under limited diversification abstract we address the problem of selecting portfolios which maximize the ratio of the average excess return to the standard deviation among all those portfolios which comprise at most a pre specified number k of securities under the assumptions of constant pairwise correlations and no short selling we argue that the simple ranking procedure of elton gruber and padberg effectively solves the problem for all values of k and that as a function of k the optimal ratio increases at a decreasing rate we also clarify why further generalization or extension of our results to other situations is improbable

consumption and the timing of income risk abstract when formulating a plan for savings does the timing of income risks matter should one be concerned with whether uncertainty in income is in the near term or the distant future of course and the impact of the timing of income risk is the subject of this article using a three period framework we provide approximate solutions for optimal consumption choices for preferences that display constant relative risk aversion and derive the relationship between innovations to income and innovations to consumption growth these results are contrasted with those for quadratic preferences and preferences that display constant absolute risk aversion we analyze consumption saving plans for several different situations of near term and distant future income risk and different kinds of preferences we conclude with a demonstration of the high degree of accuracy of our consumption approximations by comparing them to exact values computed by stochastic simulation

a note on simple criteria for optimal portfolio selection using sharpe s 7 single index model elton gruber and padberg egp 4 5 have established some simple ranking criteria for optimal portfolio selection a further extension has been made by chen and brown 2 and alexander and resnick 1 to incorporate the risk associated with the estimation of input parameters this note explores the economic rationale underlying the portfolio formation process based on the single index model in so doing we seek to enhance the intuitive appeal of the simplified portfolio criteria developed in the above studies to practitioners to this end we restate the egp solution with short sales allowed as

the importance of the savings device in precautionary savings empirical evidence from rural bangladesh we test if precautionary behavior in the consumption decisions of rural households differs across the forms of savings using monthly panel data from bangladesh we find that on average the savings device does not matter but that the effect of income on savings indeed depends on the savings device precautionary savings in the form of staple grain are relatively constant across income quartiles while nongrain precautionary savings vary across income quartiles previous studies which treat these two types of savings devices as fungible misdiagnose the reasons for and by extension the market failures behind a large percentage of the precautionary savings held by rural households

a note on market neutral portfolio selection abstract long short equity strategies allow investors to benefit potentially from both undervalued and overvalued securities the present study develops a normative portfolio model under the practical conditions that a market neutral strategy entails the offsetting long and short equity holdings are established jointly and without any constraints by the underlying market index while accurately capturing institutional procedures for short selling the model contains the analytical and economic properties as required for a ranking approach to filter out any undesirable securities under consideration in view of its practical features the analysis should be of interest to practitioners for assisting their long short investment decisions

portfolio analysis using single index multi index and constant correlation models a unified treatment in this study a simple common algorithm which is applicable to seven models is proposed for optimal portfolio selection disallowing short sales of risky securities the models considered in the analysis consist of a single index model four multi index models and two constant correlation models unlike the previous approach the proposed algorithm does not require explicit ranking of securities therefore it is particularly useful for two multi index models with orthogonal indices which do not provide any ranking criterion also because of its algorithmic efficiency as demonstrated in a simulation study on models with multiple groups the approach here can enhance their usefulness in portfolio analysis in a series of publications elton and gruber 2 and elton gruber and padberg hereafter egp 3 8 have considered extensively portfolio optimization problems using a variety of index models and constant correlation models these models are sharpe s 12 single index model cohen and pogue s 1 multi index model in the diagonal form a multi index model with orthogonal indices 8 a constant correlation model with a single group 3 and a constant correlation model with multiple groups 7 hereafter sim mim di mim or ccm s and ccm m respectively using these models egp have developed some ranking procedures to reach optimal portfolios disallowing short sales of risky securities all securities in each group are ranked according to their performance as measured by a ratio of excess return to risk they are sequentially added to feasible portfolios following the ranking hierarchy until the optimal portfolio is reached for models where explicit ranking criteria can be established the egp approach is easy to implement and it clearly explains why a security belongs or does not belong to a portfolio besides the above models it is also applicable to cohen and pogue s 1 multi index model in the covariance form hereafter mim co however it does not work well for models lacking appropriate criteria to rank securities in order to overcome ranking difficulties in mim or egp 8 have introduced a market portfolio with zero residual risk to establish an alternative ranking criterion unfortunately as egp have indicated this causes internal inconsistency in the analysis in the present study a simple algorithm for optimal portfolio selection disal