the impact of rural electric access on deforestation rates summary overpopulation and economic industrialization are two common explanations for deforestation political ecology however highlights that good governance and effective land management at the local level can offset the impact of population growth and development on environmental degradation in this paper we provide an innovative argument derived from political ecology to explain deforestation but rather than pursing a bottom up approach to governance we take a top down approach we argue that the state can ease deforestation rates by weaning rural populations off of the consumption of biomass for their energy needs by expanding rural electrification access using a panel analysis of 158 countries for the years 1990 2000 and 2010 we find that not only does rural electrification cause deforestation rates to decrease but also that it is more robust in explaining deforestation than population growth or development our study provides two innovations to political ecology it highlights that the state can help rather than hinder local populations with managing their local environments in a more sustainable way by providing them with public goods based energy alternatives and it supplements political ecology s qualitative focus on environmental degradation with a generalized quantitative analysis of state based initiatives on deforestation our results suggest that current global initiatives addressing deforestation specifically the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd agenda of the united nations framework convention on climate change should not only assist local land managers but also work with the state to ensure universal access to electricity

co integration analysis of quarterly european tourism demand in tunisia abstract the purpose of this study is to identify the factors that affect the destination choice process in addition to prices and income factors the supply factor is introduced as an explanatory variable in the econometric model co integration analysis and error correction models ecms are used to estimate the long run tourism demand elasticities and to forecast the quarterly european tourism demand for a 1 year ahead horizon the main finding of this study is that the behaviour of european tourists varies from one country to another the co integrating relationships show that the large elasticity magnitude may be the reflection of the relatively expensive services often sought after by tourists from these countries the estimated values of the supply elasticity corroborate the supply induced demand hypothesis finally compared to the basic structural model and using the root mean squared error the ecm provides more precise forecasts

testing dependence between gdp and tourism s growth rates abstract the main aim of this paper is to link the economic behaviour and statistical properties of gdp and tourism receipts growth rates through modelling the dependence to that end two developed economies such as the united kingdom non tourist oriented and spain tourist oriented and an emerging economy such as croatia tourist oriented are considered as case studies therefore a copula based garch approach is employed to describe the dependence structure between gdp and tourism receipts growth rates in this respect any causality and cointegration between tourism and gdp could justify public policies that promote a more efficient public resource allocation in the tourism industry additionally evidence of dependence between growth rates can justify the extent and direction of these policies results indicate that there is a significant asymmetric and positive dependence between tourism and gdp growth rates for the three countries studied though only for croatia is it time varying over time

e ztax tax salience and tax rates this paper examines whether the salience of a tax system affects equilibrium tax rates i analyze how tolls change after toll facilities adopt electronic toll collection etc drivers are substantially less aware of tolls paid electronically i estimate that in steady state tolls are 20 to 40 percent higher than they would have been without etc consistent with a salience based explanation for this toll increase i find that under etc driving becomes less elastic with respect to the toll and toll setting becomes less sensitive to the electoral calendar alternative explanations appear unlikely to be able to explain the findings

a time series analysis of the impact of recession on national park visitation in the united states abstract this study employed a generalized method of moments gmm estimator to monthly data of u s national park visitation to evaluate the effect of recession on visitation five different models with separate macroeconomic measures of recession were first estimated and then compared on their forecasting performance and accuracy results indicate that recession regardless of the macroeconomic measure used was negatively associated with demand to visit national parks survey based measures of recession that directly captured the consumer s confidence on the current and future state of economy outperformed other measures that relied on secondary economic data in explaining the impact of recession effect of recession varied among various types of visitation suggesting that certain sub sectors of national park tourism could experience a disproportionate burden of recession than others findings have important implications in understanding and managing the impact of recession on national parks and similar recreation areas

tourism demand forecasting models choice of appropriate variable to represent tourists cost of living abstract price is generally regarded as a major determinant of demand tourism has two price elements the cost of travel to the destination and the cost of living for tourists in the destination previous studies where econometric forecasting models have been developed for international tourism demand usually take the consumer price index in a country to be a proxy for the cost of tourism in that country owing to lack of appropriate data this article attempts to evaluate the performance of proxy variables compared with a specific tourists cost of living variable within the context of tourism demand forecasting models

cointegration analysis of german and british tourism demand for greece abstract germany and great britain are traditionally two of the most important sources of tourism for greece the purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the long run demand for tourism to greece by these two countries in order to explain the demand for tourism we are using a number of leading macroeconomic variables including income in origin countries germany and great britain tourism prices in greece and transportation cost and exchanges rates between the three countries annual data from the three countries covering the period from 1960 to 2000 are employed augmented dickey fuller test for unit root is examined in the univariate framework and johansen s maximum likelihood procedure is used to test the cointegration method and to estimate the number of cointegrating vectors of var model error correction models are estimated to explain german and british demand for tourism to greece

impacts of crisis events on international tourism demand in thailand in thai this study assesses the impacts of nine major crisis events during 2001 2009 on the number of foreign tourists in thailand the sarima with intervention models and x 12 arima are applied the results show that each crisis had a different effect on the number of tourists depending on the duration of situation type of crisis and country of origin the disease outbreaks had a greater impact than the other crises but the degree of impact was likely to decrease should a similar outbreak occurs in contrast the impact from the internal political chaos was relatively small when it occurred for the first time but would be greater if it recurred the indian ocean tsunami of 2004 had a huge impact but recovery was faster than that of other crises the 9 11 event made a minimal impact on thai tourism based on the results it is suggested that solving the internal politics should be the first priority if government aims to enhance thailand s tourism industry in addition the measures used for solving crises should be designed to fit each foreign tourist markets diverse responsiveness

current status of renewable energy in nepal opportunities and challenges abstract energy is indispensible in modern society and is one of the most important components of socio economic development nepal is one of the least developed countries with more than 80 of its population residing in rural communities per capita energy usage often viewed as a key index of the development in the country is far less than the global average per capita energy usage the energy sector is dominated by the traditional energy sources such as fuel woods crop residues and animal dung mainly for domestic usage contributing to about 86 of the national energy consumption currently 40 of the population has access to electricity and the rural electrification accounts for only 29 the majority of rural populations are meeting their energy needs by burning biomass in traditional stoves which has several environmental and public health issues nearly all fossil derived fuels consumed in the country are imported in a refined form and the perpetual increase in petroleum imports has adversely impacted the existing fragile economy of the country despite a huge potential in harnessing various renewable energy resources such as hydropower solar power wind energy and biofuels bioenergy these resources have not been sustainably captured due to geographical technical political and economical reasons this paper presents a brief account of nepal s renewable energy resources and the current status of various renewable energy technologies rets such as micro hydro solar power wind energy biofuel bioenergy improved cook stoves and improved water mill it also highlights the opportunities and barriers for the development of rets finally this paper presents some recommendations for the promotion development and implementation of rets in the country

the prospects of renewable energy technologies for rural electrification a review from nepal abstract utilization of renewable energy technologies remains one of the major energy policies throughout the world these technologies are proven to be successful for electrifying rural communities especially in developing countries realizing the benefits of renewable energy sources the government of nepal has initiated the production and distribution of renewable energy technologies in recent years mainly to electrify rural communities although these technologies are suitable for providing electricity in isolated and remote rural areas their implementation programs have not been successful as expected this review provides broad spectrum view about the energy situation in nepal and highlights the current policies and subsidies for the optimal utilization of renewable energy resources in isolated and poor rural communities in addition major promotional barriers for their implementation in nepal have been discussed

dying to save taxes evidence from estate tax returns on the death elasticity this paper examines data from u s federal tax returns to shed light on whether the timing of death is responsive to its tax consequences we investigate the temporal pattern of deaths around the time of changes in the estate tax system periods when living longer or dying sooner could significantly affect estate tax liability we find some evidence that there is a small death elasticity although we cannot rule out that what we have uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death

the effect of patient cost sharing on utilization health and risk protection abstract this paper exploits a sharp reduction in patient cost sharing at age 70 in japan using a regression discontinuity design to examine its effect on utilization health and financial risk arising from out of pocket expenditures due to the national policy cost sharing is 60 80 percent lower at age 70 than at age 69 i find that both outpatient and inpatient care are price sensitive among the elderly while i find little impact on mortality and other health outcomes the results show that reduced cost sharing is associated with lower out of pocket expenditures especially at the right tail of the distribution jel g22 i11 i12 i13 i18 j14

effects of budgetary constraints on international tourism expenditures abstract this paper implements a logistic transition regression model to examine the relationships between gdp per capita and international tourism expenditures across countries in 2001 2010 by types of savings regimes while studies have focused on the effect of income on international tourism expenditures none consider the nonlinear smooth transition status of savings and its impacts on discretionary spending and hence expenditure on tourism the impact of income on tourism expenditures can vary under different savings regimes the results show that in a low savings regime the effect of an increase in the gdp per capita on international tourism expenditures is more pronounced in a high savings regime there is strong motivation for precautionary savings and tourism is considered a luxury therefore such spending is crowded out by an increase in savings as gdp per capita increases although international tourism expenditures also increase with gdp per capita they do so at a slower rate these findings establish an accurate understanding of the effects of savings on international tourism expenditures

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

analysis of optimal timing of tourism demand recovery policies from natural disaster using the contingent behavior method this paper examines the applicability of contingent behavior hereafter cb method for analyzing dynamic processes and efficient policies in tourism demand recovery the cb questionnaires used for this study used a hypothetical disaster situation of bird flu in kyoto japan safety event visitor information and price discounting policies were designed accordingly respondents were then asked about their willingness to travel time the results showed the optimal timing for devising pertinent policies during the year we found that the first step requires a safety information announcement within one week immediately after disaster site decontamination the second step is the implementation of event information policy within 24th to 36th week after the disaster the third step constitutes announcing visitor information within the 37th to 52nd week after the second step the final step is the implementation of price discounting policy until the 52nd week immediately after the third step

living to save taxes does taxation affect the timing of death this is important as an example of how behavior might be affected by economic incentives we study how three changes in swedish inheritance taxation 2004 2005 have affected daily all cause mortality our first main result is that mortality decreased by 16 percent the day before the beginning of expected tax reductions second there was no corresponding effect before an unexpected tax reduction

forecasting international tourist flows to macau abstract the vector autoregressive var modelling technique is used to forecast tourist flows to macau from eight major origin countries regions over the period 2003 2008 the existing literature shows that the var model is capable of producing accurate medium to long term forecasts and also separate forecasts of the explanatory variables are not required a further justification for using the var technique is that it permits an impulse response analysis to be performed in order to examine the ways in which the demand for macau tourism responds to the shocks in the economic variables within the var system the implications of this analysis are discussed the forecasts generated by the var models suggest that macau will face increasing tourism demand by residents from mainland china since the needs of chinese tourists tend to be different from those from other origin countries regions especially western countries the business sectors in macau need to pay considerable attention to catering for the needs of chinese tourists

a fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average approach to forecasting tourism demand the primary aim of this paper is to incorporate fractionally integrated arma p d q arfima models into tourism forecasting and to compare the accuracy of forecasts with those obtained by previous studies the models are estimated using the volume of monthly international tourist arrivals in singapore empirical findings demonstrate the evidence that the approach we propose generates relatively lower sample mean absolute percentage errors mapes this study also deals with the volatile data faced by a forecaster we use the asian financial crisis and the september 11 event as examples of economic and political shocks with respect to the objective of shaving the coefficient mape forecasts based on the selected arfima models dominate convincingly

taxes and the timing of births because the tax savings of having a child are a realized only if the birth takes place before midnight january 1 the incentives for the marginal birth are substantial using a sample of children from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that the probability that a child is born in the last week of december rather than the first week of january is positively correlated with tax benefits we estimate that increasing the tax benefit of having a child by 500 raises the probability of having the child in the last week of december by 26 9 percent

tourism trends and the business cycle tourism in recession abstract this paper outlines the nature of the current economic recession in the usa it discusses the impact of the recession on tourism volume travel generated employment and travel prices it presents data from the data center s monthly national travel survey on how individual types of travel and types of travellers are adjusting to the overall decline in economic activity finally conclusions are presented to help planners marketers and policymakers deal more effectively with future recessions this paper forms part of a more general study a similar discussion of travel in periods of economic recovery is planned for later publication

causal effects of paternity leave on children and parents reserving a share of the parental leave period for fathers is considered necessary in order to induce fathers to take leave and to increase men s participation in child rearing we investigate how a parental leave reform directed towards fathers affected leave taking and in turn children s and parents long term outcomes a paternal leave quota greatly increases the share of men taking paternity leave we find evidence that children s school performance improves as a result particularly in families where the father has higher education than the mother we find no evidence that paternity leave counters the traditional allocation of parents labor supply

leading indicator tourism forecasts leading indicators have been widely used in general business forecasting situations but only rarely in a tourism context in this study leading indicator transfer function tf models are developed to generate forecasts of international tourism demand from the uk to six major destinations the out of sample forecasting accuracy is compared with the accuracy of forecasts generated by univariate arima and error correction models ecms the inclusion of a causal input within an arima time series framework tf model does not result in an improvement in forecasting performance the time series models outperform the ecm for short term forecasting but the ecm generates more accurate longer term forecasts

an econometric study of tourist arrivals in aruba and its implications abstract the principal purpose of this study is to analyze econometric estimates in order to explain tourist arrivals to aruba from the united states the netherlands and venezuela the study specified a dynamic econometric model for modeling short term as well as the long term responses it estimated both linear and log linear functions and it applied the box cox statistical method to determine the appropriate functional form the inclusion of venezuela as a developing country permitted the comparison of the behavior of tourism demand in relatively rich and poor countries the results indicated the extent to which cross country behavior of demand differs with respect to changes in effective prices and exchange rates this study can assist in the formulation of future macroeconomic policies as well as market and pricing strategies in a small or microstate economy

understanding tourists economizing strategies during the global economic crisis abstract this paper explores how tourists from 165 regions of eu 27 countries cut back their tourism expenditure during the global economic crisis in 2009 cutbacks in tourism expenditure are divided into two mutually related decisions firstly whether or not the tourists decided to cut back on tourism expenditure because of the crisis and second which of six options they employed as their cut back strategy fewer holidays reduced length of stay cheaper means of transport cheaper accommodation travel closer to home or change the period of travel the econometric model used to address these kinds of simultaneous decisions is an adaptation of the heckman model within a generalized structural equations modelling approach this methodology controls for sample selection bias and correlations between equations this paper highlights patterns in cutback decisions that are associated with the socioeconomic characteristics of the household and the climate in the country of origin

do expectations of future wealth increase outbound tourism evidence from korea abstract as international tourism is generally considered a luxury good models to date have shared an understanding that demand is dependent on discretionary income however consumption theories predict that a shift in demand can be induced without changes in actual earnings when expectations for future income are adjusted this presumes demand for international tourism can be influenced by wealth effects from real estate and financial assets this study tested for the wealth effect on korean outbound travelers during the 20 years between 1989 and 2009 korea is a unique place to examine in that korean households possess housing assets and financial assets that are traded actively in markets the results of this study favored the possibility of a significant wealth effect from housing on outbound travel demand but not from financial assets this may be explained by data sensitivity and the relative importance of financial assets in the korean people s wealth portfolios implications and suggestions for future research are provided along with the findings of the study

modelling and forecasting australian domestic tourism abstract in this paper we model and forecast australian domestic tourism demand we use a regression framework to estimate important economic relationships for domestic tourism demand we also identify the impact of world events such as the 2000 sydney olympics and the 2002 bali bombings on australian domestic tourism to explore the time series nature of the data we use innovations state space models to forecast domestic tourism demand combining these two frameworks we build innovations state space models with exogenous variables these models are able to capture the time series dynamics in the data as well as economic and other relationships we show that these models outperform alternative approaches for short term forecasting and also produce sensible long term forecasts the forecasts are compared with the official australian government forecasts which are found to be more optimistic than our forecasts

inbound international tourism to canary islands a dynamic panel data model abstract this paper presents a dynamic model of international tourism demand to canary islands the empirical analysis exploits the panel structure of the dataset for the 15 most important countries of origin of tourists over the period 1992 2002 by a generalized method of moments estimation of a dynamic model taking into account unobserved country specific effects the preferred model is the gmm diff proposed by arellano and bond however other models are also shown for comparison a dynamic model where the lagged dependent variable is included as regressor is used to obtain short run and long run elasticities problems arising from the non stationarity of data are dealt with by using a model in first differences the estimated coefficient for the lagged depended variable is always significant and may reflect a high degree of consumer loyalty or an important effect of word of mouth in determining demand of international tourism in brief the results suggests that tourism demand to canary islands must be considered as a luxury good and is highly dependent on the evolution of relative prices and cost of travel between origin and destination country

roles and potentials of renewable energy in less developed economies the case of nepal increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies this paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less developed economies while citing nepal as an example renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development realizing full potentials of renewable however requires addressing both the associated demand side and supply side constraints innovative subsidies and tax incentives adequate entrepreneurial support strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like nepal international factors such as large scale investment and adequate technology transfer are equally crucial to create a rapid spread and increase affordability of decentralized renewable energy technologies in less developed economies

the impact of crisis events and macroeconomic activity on taiwan s international inbound tourism demand abstract the number of inbound tourism arrivals directly impacts the tourism industry and the government agency investments therein therefore policymakers need to improve their understanding of how crisis events affect the demand for inbound tourism from the first quarter of 1996 to the second quarter of 2006 taiwan experienced four major disasters at approximately two year intervals these disasters included the asian financial crisis in 1997 the 21st september 1999 earthquake the 11th september 2001 attacks in the united states and the outbreak of sars in 2003 this paper examines the impact of crisis events on the demand for tourism in order to establish a better understanding of changes and trends in the demand for international tourism this paper uses the auto regression distributed lag model by pesaran shin and smith pesaran m h shin y smith r j 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of long run relationship journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 to examine the negative impact of these disasters on the demand for inbound tourism this paper also explores the influence of variables such as foreign exchange rates incomes relative prices and transportation costs on the dynamics of the demand for inbound tourism this paper finds that a long term equilibrium exists among all variables indicating that macroeconomic variables may be used to determine the rise or fall of the number of inbound tourism arrivals income and foreign exchange rates are both significant explanatory variables in terms of incurred losses the number of inbound tourism arrivals suffered the greatest decline during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome sars followed by the 21st september 1999 earthquake and the 11th september 2001 attacks the impact of the asian financial crisis was relatively mild this paper finds that any impact on safety whether domestic or international negatively affects tourism demand the impact of financial crises on tourism demand is less significant ensuring the safety and health of tourists is the key to maintain demand for inbound tourism

prospects progress policies and effects of rural electrification in bangladesh abstract energy is instrumental for the development and economic growth of a country although bangladesh is known as a developing country in south asia it has been recognized as a model country by the united nations for its remarkable achievements in attaining the united nations millennium development goals successive governments of the country have taken several developmental initiatives that aim to improve the standard of living and to provide basic rights to the citizens an increase in the demand for energy particularly electricity is a normal consequence of many of these initiatives thus the provision of sufficient electricity has become a genuine challenge for the government studies have indicated that even if the national demand for electricity remains static another 35 years is required by the government to provide electricity to all given the current production pace providing electricity to all may nearly be an impossible task because of the ever increasing demand for electricity the situation in rural areas where many people are deprived of electricity supply is even severe fortunately this coastal and agro based country is geographically located in an area that has a potential in exploiting different renewable forms of energy therefore renewable energy sources can be considered potential solutions to satisfy the future energy demand of the country and to provide electricity particularly in rural areas bangladesh is one of the countries that is seriously vulnerable to the effects of climate change hence the use of renewable energy can contribute to mitigate the effects of both climate change and environmental degradation in the country

are children really inferior goods evidence from displacement driven income shocks abstract this paper explores the causal link between income and fertility by analyzing women s fertility response to the large and permanent income shock generated by a husband s job displacement i find that the shock reduces total fertility suggesting that the causal effect of income on fertility is positive a model that incorporates the time cost of children and assortative matching of spouses can simultaneously explain this result and the negative cross sectional relationship i also find that a husband s displacement accelerates childbearing which is consistent with lifecycle models of fertility in which the incentive to delay is driven by expected earnings growth

when demand drops and prices rise tourist packages in the balearic islands during the economic crisis abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the crisis on the prices of package holidays to the balearic islands sold by a sample of british and german tour operators three alternative price indexes are calculated the results show that tour operators have reacted by using market strategies other than pricing aimed at boosting their revenue even though they do not push up the number of tourists thus protecting the tour operators financial yield

subsidizing the stork new evidence on tax incentives and fertility this paper exploits the introduction of a pronatalist transfer policy in the canadian province of quebec that paid up to c 8 000 to families having a child i implement a quasi experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time jurisdiction and family type the incentive was available broadly rather than to a narrow population as studied in previous work providing an exceptional opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses i find a strong effect of the policy on fertility and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with previous estimates

born on the first of july an un natural experiment in birth timing abstract it is well understood that government policies can distort behavior but what is less often recognized is that the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions we study one such introduction effect using evidence from a unique policy change in australia in 2004 the australian government announced that children born on or after july 1 2004 would receive a 3000 baby bonus although the policy was only announced seven weeks before its introduction parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive the benefit with the number of births dipping sharply before the policy commenced on july 1 2004 more australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years we estimate that over 1000 births were moved so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the baby bonus with about one quarter being moved by more than one week most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of induction and cesarean section procedures we find evidence to suggest that babies who were shifted into the eligibility period were more likely to be of high birth weight two years later on july 1 2006 the baby bonus was increased and we find that this again caused births to be moved from june to july these birth timing events represent an opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues

tourism demand for italy and the business cycle this study provides a strategy for modelling the effect of the business cycle on tourism demand under the rationale that tourism cycles are heavily influenced by lagged effects of the overall business cycle using quarterly data on overnight stays in italian hotels both domestic and inbound between 1985 and 2004 we adopt a structural time series approach to evaluate two alternative models the first with a latent cycle component lcc and the second based on specific economic explanatory variables xcv the two models are compared in terms of explanatory power best fit residual diagnostics and forecasting ability the results show similar performances the policy implication is that the xcv model can be used for calibrating countercyclical interventions in tourism policy

roles of renewable energy technologies in improving the rural energy situation in nepal gaps and opportunities abstract nepal is one of the least developed countries with the lowest per capita energy consumption in the world traditional solid biomass plays a significant role in meeting the primary energy demand in the country which represents about 87 of the total primary energy mix till date only 50 of the population has access to electricity and disparity between the urban and rural areas in terms of access to energy is prevalent in order to improve the energy situation in rural areas the government of nepal initiated the promotion and development of renewable energy technologies rets through subsidies nepal has the potential to generate energy through renewable sources like mini microhydro schemes solar power biogas and wind it is estimated that more than 50 mw of electricity can be generated from the micro hydro schemes 2100 mw from solar and 3000 mw from wind moreover the country has the capacity to develop about 1 1 million domestic biogas plants rets may provide ample opportunity to improve the vulnerable rural energy system in nepal if the available renewable resources are optimally utilized

forecasting tourist arrivals using origin country macroeconomics this study utilizes both disaggregated data and macroeconomic indicators in order to examine the importance of the macroeconomic environment of origin countries for analysing destinations tourist arrivals in particular it is the first study to present strong empirical evidence that both of these features in tandem provide statistically significant information of tourist arrivals in greece the forecasting exercises presented in our analysis show that macroeconomic indicators conducive to better forecasts are mainly origin country specific thus highlighting the importance of considering the apparent sharp national contrasts among origin countries when investigating domestic tourist arrivals given the extent of the dependency of the greek economy on tourism income but also given the perishable nature of the tourist product itself results have important implications for policy makers in greece

preschool and maternal labour market outcomes evidence from a regression discontinuity design in developing countries employment rates for mothers with young children are relatively low this study analyzes how maternal labor market outcomes in argentina are affected by the preschool attendance of their children using pooled household surveys we show that 4 year olds with birthdays on june 30 have sharply higher probabilities of preschool attendance than children born on july 1 given enrollment age rules regression discontinuity estimates using this variation suggest that preschool attendance of the youngest child in the household increases the probability of full time employment and weekly hours of maternal employment we find no effect of preschool attendance on maternal labor outcomes for children who are not the youngest in the household

paid parental leave and children s schooling outcomes this article investigates whether schooling outcomes at age 15 are affected by the duration of maternity leave i e the time mothers spend at home with their new born before returning to work we exploit an unanticipated reform in austria which extended the maximum duration of paid and job protected parental leave from 12 to 24 months for births as of 1 july 1990 using pisa data from the cohorts 1990 and 1987 we find no significant overall impact of the parental leave extension on standardised test scores however subgroup analyses reveal strong heterogeneity by maternal education and child gender