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Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Priorities and paradigms: directions in threatened species recovery

CONSERVATION LETTERS, Issue 3 2009
Sue V. Briggs
Abstract Recovering threatened species is a key challenge for conservation managers, policy makers, and researchers. This article describes a practical framework for assigning priorities for recovery of threatened species according to cost-effectiveness of recovery strategies for species groups. The framework has the following steps: (1) determine the conservation goal,persistence in the wild of the largest number of threatened species with the funds available; (2) assign threatened species to species recovery groups according to their characteristics and threats,small-population species that require actions at sites and declining-population species that require actions across landscapes; (3) identify the recovery strategies and their component actions for the species groups; (4) cost the recovery strategies for the species groups; (5) determine the cost-effectiveness of the recovery strategies for the species groups,the number of species recovered divided by the cost of the strategies; (6) assign priorities to the recovery strategies according to their cost-effectiveness; (7) allocate funds to the recovery strategies that maximize the number of threatened species recovered for the funds available; and (8) undertake the funded recovery strategies and actions. The framework is illustrated with an example. [source]

FREE CASH FLOW AND PUBLIC GOVERNANCE: THE CASE OF ALASKA

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2000
Dwight R. Lee
In a widely cited 1986 article in the American Economic Review, Michael Jensen gave the concept of free cash flow (FCF) a new twist by redefining it as cash flow in excess of that required to fund all projects with positive net present values. Put another way, FCF represents funds available in the firm that managers may choose to hold as idle cash, return to shareholders, or invest in projects with returns below the firm's cost of capital. In redefining FCF in this way, Jensen converted FCF from a measure of economic income and value into a measure of corporate assets available for discretionary, and potentially value-destroying, use by firm managers. And, as he argued in his important article, managers in mature businesses with substantial free cash flow have a tendency to destroy value by plowing too much capital back into those businesses or, often worse, making ill-advised acquisitions in unrelated businesses. Several methods have been developed in financial markets and internal corporate governance systems to discourage managers from wasting FCF. Better monitoring by boards of directors, large ownership blocks, and properly aligned management compensation contracts are all parts of the solution. And the extraordinary increase in stock repurchases in recent years, invariably applauded by investors, is another illustration of the market's success in encouraging companies to address their free cash flow problems. But if the "FCF problem" of the private sector has attracted considerable attention from finance scholars, the problem is even more acute in the public sector, where FCF can be thought of as tax revenue in excess of what is required to finance well-defined and generally accepted levels of public services. Unlike the private sector, in the public sector there are neither measures nor mechanisms by which to monitor and constrain wasteful spending by elected officials. In this article, the authors attempt to measure the costs to taxpayers of government FCF using the case of Alaska, which since 1969 has received a huge windfall of tax revenue from North Slope oil leases. After examining the state's public finances from 1968 through 1993, the authors offer $25 billion as a conservative estimate of the social losses from Alaska's waste of free cash flow during that 25-year period. [source]

Negotiation versus manipulation: The impact of alternate forms of LDC government behavior on the design of international environmental agreements,

PAPERS IN REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2001
Amitrajeet A. Batabyal
International environmental agreement; LDC government; perfect correlation Abstract. This article addresses the problem faced by an asymmetrically informed supra-national governmental authority (SNGA) with limited funds that wishes to design an international environmental agreement (IEA) for less developed countries (LDCs). The SNGA can only deal with polluting firms in the LDCs through their national governments. This tripartite hierarchical interaction is studied for two LDCs. The private information of the firms and the governments across the two countries is perfectly correlated. In this setting, we study the effects of two kinds of behavior by the governments of the LDCs. We show that despite the perfect correlation in the private information of governments and firms across the two countries, the SNGA cannot design a first-best IEA. Our analysis suggests that problems arising from the SNGA's inability to monitor the actions of the polluting firms and the national governments are less salient than is commonly believed. However, there is no denying the fact that the success of lEAs is dependent not only on the funds available for environmental protection, but also on the manner in which LDC governments represent polluting firms in their countries. [source]

Economic Analysis Of The Droit De Suite, The Artist's Resale Royalty

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 4 2003
J. D. Stanford
Interest in the Droit de Suite, the artist's resale royalty, has been re-kindled by the decision of the European Union to introduce such a scheme to apply from 2006. The general nature of the Droit de Suite as an extension of copyright is discussed. The specific proposals for a Droit de Suite in Australia are analysed. Economic arguments support the sceptical view of the Droit de Suite. It is argued that the introduction of the Droit de Suite would be predicted to reduce sales of new paintings, that selling activity would move to jurisdictions which do not have a Droit de Suite and that artists would prefer to alienate their Droit de Suite by sale of a painting. The economic analysis is supplemented by an empirical study of art auction prices of 72 artists in Australia over the period 1973,1989 which reveals that the works few artists achieve a capital gain on sale in the secondary market re-inforcing the view that, if implemented, a Droit de Suite would provide payments to only a small number of artists who are likely to be in good economic circumstances. The burden of the Droit de Suite is shown to fall on the collector when selling paintings. The effect of the imposition of the Droit de Suite will be to lower the gain to collectors of paintings. It is concluded that the Australian proposal for the Droit de Suite is based on an inadequate analysis of the art market and would require a registration procedure for art works incurring heavy costs in relation to the funds available for distribution. [source]