A mail survey of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners in two counties in northern Sweden was conducted to investigate the risk preferences of NIPF owners and their perceptions of the return and ...risk of timber investment relative to investment alternatives outside forestry. We also used the data collected from the survey to examine the relationship between the stated preferences, subjective judgements, and the observed and planned timber fellings. Our aim was to determine as to what extent the NIPF owners' harvesting behaviour was consistent with their preferences and subjective judgments. The result shows that a majority of the NIPF owners who responded to the survey were risk-neutral or risk-prone. There were no statistically significant correlations between a forest owner's attitudes toward risk and the size of forest property. However, risk preferences have significant impacts on the decision to fell: the more a forest owner likes to take risks, the more likely it is that he/she conducts final felling.
The result also shows large variations among NIPF owners with respect to the subjective judgements of the return and risk of the alternative investments. For each respondent we elicited the most preferred investment alternative based on the stated risk preferences and the subjective judgements of the return and risk of the alternative investments. Owners whose preferred investment alternative is the mature forest are on average significantly less active in harvesting than owners with other preferred investment alternatives. However, there are no significant differences in the felling intensity and the growing stock of timber among the different groups of NIPF owners. The examination of NIPF owners' harvesting behaviour, risk preferences and subjective judgments reveals strong indications of the difficulties for NIPF owners to make rational decisions when faced with uncertainties.
Business angels have been highlighted as important stakeholders for potential high-growth ventures. Extant empirical research provides evidence that they not only contribute with money but also bring ...added value to the ventures in which they have invested. However, despite the reported benefits of the value added provided by these investors there are very few studies that try to conceptualize this important issue. The present study seeks to meet this shortcoming by presenting a review of literature and research on business angels and value added. The overall objective is to recognize the range of value added activities that business angels have been reported to perform, aggregate the findings into a set of distinct but complementary value adding roles, and then link these roles to theoretical perspectives that explain why they have the potential to contribute to added value. Four different value added roles performed by informal investors are presented together with an explanation of how they can be seen as complementary to each other. The following discussion is then used to guide future studies of business angels and value added towards areas where our knowledge is still limited.
Copper is an ancient product that has persisted into the advanced industrial age. Its production methods and uses have been radically transformed several times, and it has played a central role in ...the building of the modern world economy. Despite this, it has been neglected by historians. For many years in early modern Europe Scandinavia was the biggest producer of copper, particularly through the large copper plants at Røros in Norway and in Falun in Sweden. This book tells the story. The amount of copper produced and traded is investigated, working conditions are discussed, the organisation of the companies is clarified, the active role of the state is emphasised, and the influence of the copper industry on local conditions is explored. The book gives copper an important place in European industrialisation more generally and shows that the Scandinavian copper industry was part of an extensive European copper network, which in turn was part of a global manufacturing and trading system. Through such connections, the Scandinavian copper industry was linked closely to the international and global history of copper, and therefore to colonialism, industrialisation, slavery and violence.
Kobber er et forhistorisk produkt som fortsatt produseres. Produksjonsmetodene og bruksområdene har blitt radikalt forandret mange ganger, og metallet stod sentralt i fremveksten av den moderne verdensøkonomien. I tidlig moderne tid var Skandinavia lenge den største produsenten av kobber i Europa, spesielt gjennom kobberanleggene i Falun i Sverige og på Røros i Norge. Likevel har metallet ofte blitt oversett. Denne boken forteller historien. Mengde kobber som ble produsert og solgt undersøkes, arbeidsforhold diskuteres, organiseringen av selskapene avklares, statens aktive rolle vektlegges, og kobberindustriens innflytelse på lokale forhold utforskes. Det vises at den skandinaviske kobberindustrien var en del av et stort europeisk kobbernettverk, som igjen var en del av et globalt produksjons- og handelssystem. Slik knyttes skandinavisk kobber tett til metallets internasjonale og globale historie: til europeisk industriutvikling, kolonialisme, slaveri og vold.
Tour guides have traditionally played a key role in linking tour operators, incoming agencies and tourists. However, very little attention has been given to the competences that involve performative ...aspects of guiding. Such performative competences involve the complex maneuvring in native and foreign cultures, intercultural mediating, functioning as pathfinders and mentors, and negotiating in unfamiliar destinations to their guests in a culturally sensitive manner, and coordinating group movements in space. The article examines the complexity involved in guided tours, and consequently the need for a deeper understanding of the performative aspects of guided tours. The article concludes that the performative aspects of guiding tourists involve interpretations, mediations and translations through verbal and bodily communication. It also involves the ability to engage by producing intense moments through narratives and creative affordances. One final conclusion from this work is that it is a challenge to actually use the variety of scientific perspectives offered within tourism education programs in order to produce hybrid study outcomes, but, it could also be seen as the pragmatic approach that tour guides adopt in practice.
De westerse wereld verkeert in een impasse. Er zijn crises op het gebied van de economie en het milieu. Toenemende mondiale competitie zet de westerse hegemonie onder druk terwijl de schaarste aan ...grondstoffen snel groter wordt. Er leeft zowel een gevoel van richtingloosheid als het idee op een doodlopende weg te zijn beland. Eenzijdig inzetten op economische groei om deze problemen en gevoelens aan te pakken blijkt achterhaald. Ook duurzame ontwikkeling als strategie is ontoereikend. In dit boek zet de auteur een belangrijke stap naar de oplossing - want die oplossing is er wel degelijk! Hij introduceert een nieuw begrip: welstendigheid. Hierin staat het welzijn van de mens centraal, in het hier en nu en op de lange termijn. Vanuit deze gedachte neemt de auteur ons mee op reis naar een 'nieuwe kijk op groei': een 'Grand Design' voor de 21e eeuw. Hierbij heeft hij het volste vertrouwen in de mens - deze moet zich die 'nieuwe kijk' alleen nog eigen maken. De oplossingen voor de problemen van deze tijd blijken dichterbij te liggen dan menigeen denkt.
This paper investigates how ethnic minorities in rural China are faring compared with the ethnic majority. The village is the unit of analysis and large surveys for 2002 are used. Minority villages ...in northeast China are found to have a somewhat better economic situation than the average majority village, but minority villages in the southwest are clearly faring worse. Industrialisation, inputs in agricultural production, stock of human capital of the labour force, wage level on the local labour market as well as indicators of path dependency are all found to affect the economic situation of a village. Location is the single most important circumstance working against a favourable economic situation for minority villages in the northwest and particularly the southwest. Low village income results in long-distance migration for many ethnic minorities, but for some minorities their ethnicity hinders migration.
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