<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.6in 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Who benefits from the proliferation of ecolodges, beachfront resorts, safari parks, river cruises, forest forays and other similar and increasingly popular ventures popping up in developing economies across the world? Critics hold that multinational hotel chains, influential tour operators and foreign interests sometimes in association with powerful domestic groups often engage in anticompetitive practices at the expense of local communities, domestic workers and other stakeholders where the tourism activities take place. In this paper, we examine the possibility of market power abuses in the tourism industry in small economies or small national economies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Many of these small economies have recently inaugurated antitrust enforcement agencies charged with curtailing market power abuses and other anticompetitive practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We also examine how effective these agencies are likely to be in challenging the powerful tourism industry. Succinctly, we conclude that monopsonistic practices may arise in the tourism sector of small economies. But we argue that domestic competition agencies are not suited to challenge monopsony for various reasons including a lack of political will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We also analyze the plausible cartelization role of regional marketing boards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Regional marketing boards are collaborative efforts by groups of countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Because it is entrusted with cross jurisdictional enforcement of competition laws, a &ldquo;regional&rdquo; agency with jurisdiction in several countries across a region may be more likely to successfully confront monopsony problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>However, we conclude that a regional enforcement agency is equally unlikely to successfully challenged cross-border anticompetitive practices because it is not likely to challenge the impairment of consumer welfare of foreign nationals.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;;"> </span></span></p>

During the early 1990's, in the early days of the worldwide competition policy boom, Spencer Waller and Joshua Newberg argued that difficulties inherent in grafting common law concepts---such as antitrust---onto non common law traditions would undermine the administration of competition law in non common law tradition countries. Recent independent survey data on the performance of competition programs in 102 nations shows deplorable differences in performance, lending some weight to the WallerNewberg thesis.This article tests whether differences in legal tradition contributes to the observed variance in competition agency performance.A careful understanding of the influence of legal tradition and other factors underscoring the relevance, shortcomings and problems of competition policy performance are useful for determining whether competition programs should be at all reproduced elsewhere, whether they should be modified prior to adoption or whether they should be adopted verbatim. Familiarity with performance factors is also useful both for program administration and program sequencing. Comparative examinations of competition programs enable decision-makers to properly allocate resources and to address policy issues.

We estimate the effects of demographic and socioeconomic factors in the wage income gap between White non-Latinos and Latinos the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S. by nativity and gender for the period 2005-2007 using data from the American Community Survey (ACS). Linear decomposition of annual wage income showed that age and education are the two most relevant factors that contribute to explain differences in wage income among the U.S. born males and females. Age explains 43% of the differences in males and 55% in females; education explains about 20% for both. In contrast, occupation and education are the most relevant factors that explain wage gap among male and female immigrants; occupations explain about 30% and education about 27%; in addition, while age explains 9% of the wage gap among males, the number of years in the United States explains 11% of the wage gap among females. Among immigrants, the type of occupation explains slightly more of the wage difference than education. Our findings support general recommendations: to urge Latinos in the PNW to successfully complete high school, present to them the availability of apprenticeship programs, but also encourage them to attend college with the possibility of pursuing postgraduate or specialized studies. Lower returns to Latino education at all levels warrant attention to the quality of education in accordance to the demand for a qualified labor force. Further research on returns to education for White non-Latinos and Latinos (including apprenticeship programs) and occupations, together with evaluation instruments to measure the efficacy of educational investments, could benefit both the workforce and employers.

Using data from the American Community Survey 2005Survey , 2006, and 2007 we quantify the socio-economic factors that determine the likelihood of being self-employed (SE) of Latinos and White non-Latinos in the Pacific North West, U.S., and how these factors affect their income. Only 5.5% of Latinos are self-employed compared to 9.4% of White non-Latinos and Latinos earn 30% less than White non-Latinos. Non-linear decomposition results show that age and educational attainment explain 41% of the ethnic gap in the probability of being SE among the U.S. born. In contrast, gender, type of occupation, number of years in the United States, and good command of the English language explain 22% of the ethnic gap in the probability of being SE among immigrants. Linear decomposition of self-employment income (SEI) shows that age, marital status, and type of occupation explains 90% of the ethnic gap in SEI among the U.S. born; however, ethnic differences in SEI among immigrants are mixed. Thus, policies aimed to reduce the ethnic gap in SEI should take into account the skewed distribution of skills of Latinos, and the degree of transfer ability of immigrants' skills into the local environment. Reducing this gap poses the challenge of improving the skills of many self-employed Latino immigrants with limited choices or transferable experience.

No abstract