Manaakitanga plays an important role in Māori society. There are several meanings associated to this Māori cultural concept, one of which refers to the fostering and nurturing of relationships between a host and a visitor. The well-being of the visitor is paramount to the development of this relationship as the mana (prestige) of the host is at stake. If the host fails to manaaki (support) their visitor this could result in the loss of mana within the Māori community as the host has shown they are incapable of attending to the needs of others. In recent times, there has been an increased presence of the term manaakitanga in tourism related documents, which has generated several interpretations of this cultural concept. Currently, various government organisations use this concept as a basis for developing both short and long-term strategies. This is particularly noticeable in the New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2015. However, there are varied interpretations of the term manaakitanga by the tourism industry, which are in conflict with Māori operators understanding and knowledge of manaakitanga reflected in their businesses. In order to contextualise the experiences and perspectives provided by Māori tourism operators, a theoretical framework has been developed. This framework called ‘Te Kōhai’ located in kaupapa Māori (Māori ideology) ideology best reflects the world-view of the participants who form the basis of this study. Thus, this study has been prompted by the research question - how is manaakitanga interpreted in a Māori tourism operation? Possible misinterpretation of manaakitanga may result in the concept being used incorrectly and the transgression of cultural practices, thus compromising the experiences offered by Māori tourism operations. It is important then, to investigate, whether manaakitanga is understood as ‘hospitality’ in the tourism industry and more specifically, by people who work within a Māori tourism operation. Additionally, it is important to determine how staff employed in a Māori tourism operation, understand and portray this concept. Subsequently, interpretations of manaakitanga from the perspective of Māori tourism operators, forms the basis of this thesis.

Thesis (PhD.(Assessment and Quality Assurance))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 301-333) Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-81).

Zugleich: Diss. Wirtschaftswiss. Zürich. / Im Buchh.: Bern ; Stuttgart ; Wien : P. Haupt. Literaturverz.

The three essays of this dissertation inform tax policy design. It is a compilation of empirical and experimental research work. The first and the second essays explore the performance of a recent tax policy reform at the sub-national level in India in terms of revenue efficiency as well as economic efficiency. India is among the only three countries in the world to have adopted a sub-national VAT. Therefore, empirically examining its performance not only improves the understanding of this important tax policy reform but also informs tax policy decision-making at the sub-national level in other developing countries. India transitioned to the state-level VAT between the years 2003 and 2008. Among other things, it was expected to achieve revenue growth and decrease tax cascading on commodities by improving economic efficiency of the indirect tax system. In the first essay, I model the impact of the VAT on revenue by adding revenue dependent administrative and compliance costs associated with taxation to an existing model developed by Keen and Lockwood (2010). The theoretical results show that replacing one type of indirect tax with another improves long-run revenue efficiency only if there is a net decrease in the administrative, compliance and distortionary costs of taxation at the margin. I then compile a unique state-level dataset for the years 1990 to 2010 to determine changes in the long-run revenue efficiency from the use of the VAT. This essay contributes to the literature by extending an existing revenue efficiency model and testing it in the unique situation of India’s sub-national VAT. The results reveal a significant improvement in the long-run revenue efficiency of the sales tax instrument used by state governments. The model implies this improvement is driven by a net fall in the marginal taxation costs from the use of the state-level VAT. This finding has important implications on the role of a sub-national VAT in the future as an effective tax instrument in the developing countries. The second essay appeals to the general theory of tax incidence which suggests that a VAT will have less impact on prices than a traditional turnover tax because the VAT does not “get stuck” in the production process as a turnover tax does. The impact should be larger for goods that have more components to the production process as the tax then “touches” more of the final product. In this essay I measure the change in the level of tax cascading with VAT by using multiple waves of the state- and household-level expenditure surveys. Specifically I test the impact of the VAT on the real consumption of households on a variety of consumption goods. I find the biggest significant decrease in the tax cascading burden of the long-term durable goods which essentially involve the maximum production components. This result is found in the 18 more developed states of India which are the focus of the empirical analysis due to data constraints. The third essay is an experimental research which looks at the influence of institutions on the economic burden of an excise tax. The traditional long-run tax incidence theory establishes that the economic incidence of an excise tax is independent of the assignment of the liability to pay tax. However, the theory is silent on the possible effects of the market institutions on tax incidence. Since all markets need an institution to function and every market institution has its own unique price and quantity determination property, it is important to understand its bearings on the incidence of taxes. Existing experimental research has tested economic incidence under many different market institutions but no previous research systematically analyzes and compares the incidence of a unit tax under two important market institutions we deal with in everyday life. One of these institutions is posted offer which dominates the consumer goods markets in developed countries and the other is double auction which is frequently observed in developing countries. I report a significant impact of these market institutions on tax incidence. In particular, I find that consumers bear a much higher burden of a unit tax in the posted offer markets as compared to the double auction markets and their burden further increases when the liability to pay the tax is on the seller.

We study the effectiveness of intra-household insurance among married couples when the husband loses his job due to a mass layoff or plant closure. Empirical results based on Austrian administrative data show that husbands suffer persistent employment and earnings losses, while wives' labor supply increases moderately due to extensive margin responses. Wives' earnings gains recover only a tiny fraction of the household income loss and, in the short-term, public transfers and taxes are a more important form of insurance. We show that the presence of children in the household is a crucial determinant of the wives' labor supply response.

Most of Ecuador’s contributors don’t prepare a well elaborate tax credit application form for their IVA declarations, which lead them to give a payment that goes unnecessary above the actual value, due to the inadequate form filling. In this article, we can see that through the implementation of a simple accounting system, taxpayers can optimize their IVA declaration without breaking any current tax provision, even more, going side by side with our country’s established law. / Gran parte de los contribuyentes en el Ecuador no realizan una aplicación correcta del crédito tributario en sus declara­ciones de IVA, lo que los lleva a pagar un valor mucho más alto del que pagarían si hicieran una aplicación adecuada. En el presente artículo, demostramos que a través de la implementación de un sencillo sistema contable, los contribuyentes pueden optimizar su declaración del IVA sin infringir ninguna disposición tributaria vigente, sino, por el contrario, apegándose estrictamente a lo que dice la ley en el país.

We study interdependencies in spousal labor supply and the effectiveness of intrahousehold insurance in a sample of married couples, where the husband loses his job due to a mass layoff or plant closure using data from the Austrian Social Security Database. We show that in our sample of relatively young couples the shock hits households at crucial stages of family formation, which requires careful modeling of the wives' counterfactual lifecycle labor market patterns. In our empirical analysis, we propose three independent control groups of unaffected households to identify the causal effects of husbands' displacement on wives' labor supply. Our empirical results show that husbands suffer large and persistent employment and earnings losses over the first 5 years after displacement. But wives' labor supply increases only moderately and they respond predominantly at the extensive margin. The implied participation elasticity with respect to the husband's earnings shock is very small, about -0:04. While the wives' earnings gains recover only a tiny fraction of the household income loss, public transfers and taxes are a more important insurance at least in the short run. In terms of non-labor market related outcomes, we find a small positive effect on the probability of divorce, but no effect of the husband's job displacement on fertility. The presence and ages of children in the household are crucial determinants of the wife's labor supply response. The most responsive group are mothers, who are planning to return to the labor market after a maternity break, while mothers of very young children or wives without children remain unresponsive. We thus conclude that Austria's strong gender identity norms are an explanation for the limited scope of intra-household insurance.

O objetivo principal deste estudo reside em propor a utilização do indicador EVA® valor econômico agregado, como forma de medir e comparar o desempenho econômico de unidades de uma rede de hotéis. O trabalho irá sugerir a implantação de um modelo de avaliação de desempenho de unidades hoteleiras, com base no indicador EVA® valor econômico agregado. Será utilizada a técnica de estudo de caso, aplicada a duas unidades da rede hoteleira, com o objetivo de desenvolver e verificar a eficácia do indicador EVA®. Como resultado, pretende-se possibilitar à empresa contar com um sistema de avaliação de desempenho que lhe ofereça uma melhor orientação para cada decisão a ser tomada. O trabalho também tem por objetivo contemplar a comparação de alguns indicadores de desempenho, comumente utilizados pelas empresas, com o EVA®, abordar a conceituação de custo de capital e suas formas de cálculo, estabelecer, para esta rede de hotéis, uma fórmula, ou método, para definição de seu próprio custo, definir os ajustes contábeis necessários para cálculo do EVA® e desenvolver o modelo conceitual de avaliação a partir do EVA®, em um caso prático. / The main objective of this study lives in proposing the use of the indicator EVA® economic value added, as form of to measure and to compare the economic performance of units of a net of hotels. The work will suggest the implantation of a model of evaluation of performance of hotel units, with base in the indicator EVA® economic value added. The technique of case study will be used, applied to two units of the hotel net, with the objective of to develop and to verify the effectiveness of the indicator EVA®. As result, intends to make possible to the company to count with a system of performance evaluation that offers it a better orientation for each decision to be taken. The work also has for objective to contemplate the comparison of some performance indicators, commonly used by the companies, with EVA®, to approach the concept of capital cost and their calculation forms, to establish, for this net of hotels, a formula, or method, for definition of his own cost, to define the necessary accounting adjustments for calculation of EVA® and to develop the conceptual model of evaluation starting from EVA®, in a practical case.

The aim of this thesis was to characterize the concept of business efficiency, evaluate different approaches of its measurement and identify relevant factors of business efficiency. The theoretical part is focused on the measurement of efficiency in the context of historical evolution and further on the traditional and modern approaches to measurement and management of business efficiency. In the practical part, the efficiency of the selected company was evaluated initially through financial analysis, followed by the evaluation of its economic value added (EVA) calculated according to the methodology of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MPO). In conclusion, the sectoral comparison was done using the diagnostic system of financial indicators INFA. In the years 2010 and 2014, the selected company did not create economic value added (EVA), which was mainly due to the lower value of the achieved profit. On the other hand, in the years 2011 - 2013 economic value added (EVA) was achieved. Benchmarked against industry comparables, the selected company has achieved better results.