ricirms as a strategic tool for small and medium tourism enterprises abstract the small and medium tourism enterprises smtes which dominate the international tourism market face difficulties in gaining access to crss because of their size structural functional problems following a brief analysis of smtes based on research undertaken at the aegean islands greece it is proposed that regional integrated computer information reservation management systems ricirmss can be utilized as a strategic tool for the development of both the smte and the destination managed by a regional tourism committee the ricirms should attempt to maximize the long term business revenues for the smtes of the area satisfy the needs of the more demanding tourist and increase the benefits of tourism for the local area furthermore ricirmss may be utilized to integrate the tourism products of the destination diagonally and also to force smtes to cooperate with each other in order to achieve economies of scope synergies and system gains it is concluded that smtes and destinations which do not develop ricirmss may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as they will be unable to satisfy the needs of tourism demand and supply for the next century

the choice between market failures and corruption because government intervention transfers resources from one party to another it creates room for corruption as corruption often undermines the purpose of the intervention governments will try to prevent it they may create rents for bureaucrats induce a misallocation of resources and increase the size of the bureaucracy since preventing all corruption is excessively costly second best intervention may involve a certain fraction of bureaucrats accepting bribes when corruption is harder to prevent there may be both more bureaucrats and higher public sector wages also the optimal degree of government intervention may be nonmonotonic in the level of income

the role of wages and auditing during a crackdown on corruption in the city of buenos aires abstract we study the prices paid for basic inputs during a crackdown on corruption in the public hospitals of the city of buenos aires argentina during 1996 97 we find a well defined negative effect on the measures used to capture corruption prices paid by hospitals for basic homogeneous inputs decrease by 15 percent during the first 9 months of the crackdown after this period prices increase but they are still 10 percent lower than those prevailing before the crackdown relative to the precrackdown period higher wages play no role in inducing lower input prices when audit intensity can be expected to be maximal during the first phase of the crackdown but have a negative and well defined effect when audit intensity takes intermediate levels the last phase of the crackdown controlling for fixed effects we find that the wage elasticity of input prices exceeds 20 these results are consistent with the standard model of bribes of gary becker and george stigler

post fordism and flexibility the travel industry polyglot abstract theorists argue that leisure and travel related activities have become increasingly commodified reflecting the broader evolution of a postmodern culture of consumption this paper argues that these developments have produced a travel industry complex characterized by a polyglot of varying production processes each placing a premium on flexible forms of accumulation focusing on certain key sectors of the travel industry the paper examines how partly because of new information technologies each element of the travel industry polyglot appears to have been affected by flexible based production strategies such as the externalization of ancillary services the development of interfirm strategic alliances and sophisticated product differentiation through brand segmentation the paper ends with a call for in depth empirical investigations to help develop a superior understanding of how flexible production techniques affect the various components comprising the travel industry

legal standards enforcement and corruption stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials corruption in contrast to the tollbooth view of regulation the standard chosen by a self interested government is a non monotonic function of officials corruption and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator international evidence on environmental regulation shows that standards correlate positively with per capita income and negatively with corruption consistent with the model s predictions for benevolent governments jel d73 k42 l51

understanding the motivations behind the myanmar china energy pipeline multiple streams and energy politics in china abstract why exactly did china decide to construct the myanmar china energy pipeline while important for china s long term energy strategy very few studies have yet analyzed the project from the standpoint of china s domestic policy process this paper fills the gap by illuminating the broader historical context and presenting how this pipeline fits into energy politics in china the policy making process is fleshed out by using the multiple streams framework msf analysis of this case using msf shows that first local governments and scholars played a key role in facilitating the project especially in raising the proposal to the government agenda second a policy window remains an important element in china s energy policy decisions in light of the china myanmar pipeline idea was not taken seriously in the 1990s when it was first proposed third although this cross border energy project is part of a national strategy of energy security domestic political considerations such as promoting investment in china s underdeveloped southwest were also at work these conclusions are useful for understanding not only the motivations behind such transboundary pipeline projects but also china s energy decisions at large

an equilibrium queuing model of bribery it is sometimes argued that bribery is inefficient because bureaucrats may cause delays for attracting more bribes this hypothesis is examined in the context of a queue where customers having different values of time are ranked by their bribe payments to the queue s server the nash equilibrium strategies of the customers are derived it is shown that the server is unlikely to slow down the allocation process when bribery is allowed the model does not have stringent informational requirements and the equilibrium outcome minimizes the average value of time costs of the queue it also suggests a useful auctioning procedure

challenges and countermeasures of china s energy security china is now a major consumer and importer of energy and its choices and policies will increasingly affect the rest of the world this paper analyses the key features of china s energy policy as it faces the prospect of possible challenges to its energy security given the increasing reliance on fuel imports and the need to transform its energy to meet the requirements of a modern fast growing economy the paper examines whether the current energy mix is appropriate and sustainable and considers the china s policymakers new emphasis on energy efficiency conservation renewable energy and the shift to natural gas the primary energy source it examines the internal and external constraints on china s energy policy and considers the strategic dilemmas arising from china s increasing involvement in international energy markets it concludes that both the domestic and international implications of china s search for energy security will confront policymakers with hard choices that will affect not only energy policy but also china s geopolitical grand strategy

the strategic role of tourism trade fairs in the new age of tourism abstract tourism trade fairs have played an important role in the industry facilitating the sales function of companies in the fordian phase of tourism in the new age of tourism their mission is more complex they contribute systematically to the competitiveness of companies and clusters strengthening their information function this article examines the implications for tourism company policies in this new age as well as the current and potential contribution of tourism trade fairs to improving each one of porter s competitive factors demand input factors supporting industry and company structure finally the article recommends strategic guidelines for the development of tourism trade fairs and for optimizing participation in these events

active and passive waste in government spending evidence from a policy experiment we propose a distinction between active and passive waste as determinants of the cost of public services active waste entails utility for the public decision maker whereas passive waste does not we analyze purchases of standardized goods by italian public bodies and exploit a policy experiment associated with a national procurement agency we find that i some public bodies pay systematically more than others for equivalent goods ii differences are correlated with governance structure iii the variation in prices is principally due to variation in passive rather than active waste and iv passive waste accounts for 83 percent of total estimated waste

pervasive shortages under socialism we present a new theory of pervasive shortages under socialism based on the assumption that the planners are self interested because the planners meaning bureaucrats in the ministries and managers offirms cannot keep the official profits that firms earn it is in their interest to create shortages of output and to collect bribes from consumers the theory implies that 1 an increase in the official price of a good might reduce output 2 market socialism is bound to fail even without computational complexities facing the planners and 3 price liberalization will succeed only iffirms get to keep their profits

can the west save africa in the new millennium the western aid effort toward africa has surged due to writ ings by well known economists a celebrity mass advocacy campaign and decisions by western leaders to make africa a major foreign policy priority this survey contrasts the predominant transformational approach west comprehensively saves africa to occasional swings to a marginal approach west takes one small step at a time to help individual africans evaluation of one step at a time initiatives is generally easier than that of transformational ones either through controlled experiments although these have been oversold or simple case studies where it is easier to attribute outcomes to actions we see two themes emerge from the literature survey 1 escalation as each successive western transformational effort has yielded disappointing results as judged at least by stylized facts since again the econometrics are shaky the response has been to try an even more ambitious effort and 2 the cycle of ideas rather than a progressive testing and discarding of failed ideas we see a cycle in aid ideas in many areas in africa with ideas going out of fashion only to come back again later after some lapse long enough to forget the previous disappointing experience both escalation and cyclicality of ideas are symptomatic of the lack of learning that seems to be characteristic of the transfor mational approach in contrast the marginal approach has had some successes in improving the well being of individual africans such as the dramatic fall in mortality

pipeline politics a study of india s proposed cross border gas projects abstract india s energy situation is characterized by increasing energy demand high fossil fuel dependency large import shares and significant portion of population deprived of modern energy services at this juncture natural gas being the cleanest fossil fuel with high efficiency and cost effectiveness is expected to play an important role india with only 0 6 of proven world reserves is not endowed with adequate natural gas domestically nevertheless there are gas reserves in neighbouring regions which gives rise to the prospects of three cross border gas pipeline projects namely iran pakistan india turkmenistan afghanistan pakistan india and myanmar bangladesh india this study is a political analysis of these pipeline projects first it provides justification on use of natural gas and promotion of cross border energy trade then it examines these three pipeline projects and analyses the security concerns role of different actors their positions shifting goals and strategies the study develops scenarios on the basis of changing circumstances and discusses some of the pertinent issues like technology options for underground underwater pipelines and role of private players it also explores impact of india s broader foreign relations and role of saarc on the future of pipelines and proposes energy induced mutually assured protection map as a concept for regional security

obtaining a driver s license in india an experimental approach to studying corruption we conduct two experiments to understand the process of obtaining a driver s license in india in the first experiment we randomly assign license candidates to one of three groups bonus offered a financial reward if they could obtain their license fast lesson offered free driving lessons upfront and control the control group alone illustrates bureaucratic failures 71 of the license getters in that group avoided the mandated driving test and 62 failed a surprise driving test the system responds to private needs there are more license getters in the bonus group but at a social cost there are more license getters who cannot drive in the bonus group the system however also appears to respond to social considerations as there are more license getters in the lesson group large extra legal payments are made by license getters those in the control group pay 2 5 times the official fee more of these extra legal payments take place in the bonus group surprisingly these extra legal payments are not direct bribes to bureaucrats but instead payments to agents in the second experiment we perform an audit study to better understand the role of agents the audit shows that agents can provide licenses to individuals even if they cannot drive but the audit also shows that agents cannot as easily circumvent all other rules we argue that our findings are most consistent with agents being the channel for corruption in this system we also report some suggestive evidence that bureaucrats create red tape possibly to induce more license candidates to use agents

energy security in china a quantitative analysis and policy implications abstract this study aims to examine how china s energy security has changed over 30 years of reform and the opening period it constructs a 4 as quantitative evaluation framework the availability of energy resources the applicability of technology the acceptability by society and the affordability of energy resources the quantitative results show that china s energy security was at its best during the sixth fyp period 1981 1985 but then deteriorated until it hit higher levels between 1995 and 2005 however it was still lower than the level reached during the sixth fyp period during the eleventh fyp period 2006 2010 the energy security situation deteriorated again differences in policy priority over the study period appear to affect the country s energy security status this study suggests that china needs to develop renewable energy resources on a large scale and pay more attention to emissions control to reverse the downward trend in energy security

distributional effects of corruption when enforcement is biased theory and evidence from bribery in schools in bangladesh in many models of corruption where enforcement is unbiased and the official maximizes her income the rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children s education implying that corruption reduces educational inequality we develop models of bribery that reflect the fact that in developing countries anti corruption enforcement is not unbiased and higher income of a household is associated with higher bargaining power and better quality of institutions in models of biased enforcement the rich are less likely to pay bribes making bribery regressive the ols estimates of the effects of household income are likely to find spurious progressivity in the incidence of bribery in schools we exploit temporary rainfall shocks to identify the ability to pay effect while long term rainfall differences identify the combined poor people and poor area effects the iv estimates show that the poor are more likely to pay bribes and the amount paid does not depend on household income the evidence rejects the ability to pay and related models based on unbiased enforcement and is consistent with the refusal to pay model of bargaining power where the rich decline to pay bribes free schooling is free only for the rich and corruption makes the playing field skewed against the poor

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

eight questions about corruption this paper will discuss eight frequently asked questions about public corruption 1 what is corruption 2 which countries are the most corrupt 3 what are the common characteristics of countries with high corruption 4 what is the magnitude of corruption 5 do higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption 6 can competition reduce corruption 7 why have there been so few recent successful attempts to fight corruption 8 does corruption adversely affect growth

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

balancing priorities aligning interests developing mitigation capacity in china and india debates about how to respond to climate change have largely focused on the difficulties in agreeing on national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by assuming that the main obstacle to

a theory of misgovernance this paper tries to explain why government bureaucracies are often associated with red tape corruption and lack of incentives the paper identifies two specific ingredients that together can provide an explanation the fact that governments often act precisely in situations where markets fail and the presence of agency problems within the government we show that these problems are exacerbated at low levels of development and in bureaucracies dealing with poor people we also argue that we need to posit the existence of a welfare oriented constituency within the government in order to explain red tape and corruption

bribery behavioral drivers of distorted decisions we experimentally investigate behavioral drivers of bribery focusing on the role of self interest reciprocity and moral costs associated with distorting judgment in our laboratory experiment two participants compete for a prize a referee picks the winner participants can bribe the referee when the referee can keep only the winner s bribe bribes distort her judgment when the referee keeps the bribes regardless of the winner bribes no longer influence her decision an experiment in an indian market confirms these results these findings imply that our participants are influenced by bribes out of self interest and not because of a desire to reciprocate further evidence shows that self interest guides decisions to a greater extent when referees have scope for avoiding the moral costs associated with distorting judgment as a result limiting referees ability to form self serving evaluations can significantly reduce the effectiveness of bribes less

china s energy security perception and reality abstract china now the world s second largest economy is worried about energy security which underpins the core objectives of beijing and the political legitimacy of the communist party of china the purpose of this study is to explore certain popular myths about china s energy security the study consists of six parts after the introduction it formulates the obscure concept of energy security and attempts to contextualize it with chinese characteristics then it explicitly points out that the largest driver of oil demand by china as the world s factory is transport instead of industry next it explores the effectiveness of transnational pipelines as a measure of energy security and explains why they are less effective than many observers have previously assumed furthermore it investigates the global expansion of chinese national oil companies and questions their actual contribution to energy security a few concluding remarks then follow

fighting corruption to improve schooling evidence from a newspaper campaign in uganda what are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning we argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption we illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experiment a newspaper campaign in uganda aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools parents with information to monitor local officials handling of a large education grant program the campaign was highly successful and the reduction in capture had a positive effect on enrollment and student learning jel d73 i22 o12

integrating the tourism industry problems and strategies this paper addresses two interrelated issues in tourism development horizontal integration within tourism s component sectors and attempts at vertical integration between them the paper employs a conceptual framework adapted from regulation theory to assess the dynamics of these processes particularly in relation to airlines and hotels through examining some of the most important examples of both horizontal and vertical integration it indicates how these have influenced contemporary strategies in the component sectors the paper goes on to illustrate how trends towards fordist organization within airlines have conflicted with post fordist trends in hotel operations to undermine attempts at vertical integration across the tourism industry

the impact of globalization on small and medium enterprises new challenges for tourism policies in european countries abstract the pressure of globalization is having a major impact on the small and medium enterprises smes of the european tourism industry globally acting suppliers decreasing transportation costs and emerging new destinations have put pressure on the european smes in traditional destinations as many european countries are economically very dependent on tourism a need for effective policy support arises the paper focuses on the questions what could be done to restore the european tourism industry as a growth engine for income and employment as well as what roles should the government sector and the private sector respectively play the implementation of flexible operating network alliances and holistic destination management techniques geared to meet post modern tourism demand are suggested to alleviate the impacts of globalization on smes

wealth health and health services in rural rajasthan what are the determinants of health and of well being income and wealth are clearly part of the story but does access to health care have a large independent effect as the advocates of more investment in health care such as the world health organization s commission on macroeconomics and health commission on macroeconomics and health 2001 have argued this paper reports on a recent survey in a poor rural area of the state of rajasthan in india intended to shed some light on this issue where there was an attempt to use a set of interlocking surveys to collect data on health and economic status as well as the public and private provision of health care

organic incremental and induced paths to sustainable mass tourism convergence this paper positions sustainable mass tourism smt as the desired and impending outcome for most destinations natural resource scarcity development of green technology climate change awareness the global financial crisis institutionalised environmentalism and internet technology all facilitate the emergence of sustainability as a societal norm that is combining with the longer established norm of growth desirability smt convergence is occurring along three distinctive paths in an evolutionary manner that reflects environmental pragmatism the market driven organic path describes the conventional tourism area life cycle model of butler whilst the regulation driven incremental path entails deliberate alternative tourism dat in which carrying capacities are gradually increased to accommodate higher visitation levels the hybrid induced path describes planned mega resorts conceived as growth poles each model is invested with its own specific planning and management implications

a review of edward luce s in spite of the gods the strange rise of modern india india poses a development puzzle on a grand scale sixty years of electoral democ racy thirty years of rapid growth and a number of world class institutions such as the institutes of technology or election commission have led to talk of india as a superpower in a league with the united states and china yet on many fronts india s indicators of human well being e g malnutrition immunization are at or below those of much poorer sub saharan african countries measures of the administrative capacity of the state on basics like attendance performance and corruption reveal a potentially flailing state whose brilliantly formulated policies are disconnected from realities on the ground this review essay of ed luce s in spite of the gods attempts to articulate the puzzle that is modern india and pose questions about the development trajectory of a country whose fortunes will shape our century

china s energy security and its challenges towards 2035 abstract within the last twenty years china has become dependent on import of coal oil and natural gas especially oil is now an economic and a security concern by the chinese regime and key international stakeholders until 2035 china will account for one fourth of the global net growth in global gas consumption and more than half of the net growth in oil consumption the future demand cannot be covered by china s own conventional and unconventional sources pipelines from neighboring countries can cover more than half of the needed import of natural gas by 2030 but only 10 percent of the import demand of oil is secured so far even if china attempts to address its insufficient supply of oil by increased investments in overseas oil fields there is still a large gap furthermore the oil import will largely come from politically unstable countries and regions and the bulk of the supplies must be shipped through the potentially insecure hormuz and malacca straits the ongoing territorial disputes with neighboring countries regarding areas with gas and oil reserves in contested waters bear evidence to regional conflict potentials and china appears to engage more actively in energy diplomacy and regional cooperation