The conquests of Alexander III ("The Great") transformed the economic as well as political landscape of ancient Greece and Persia. It produced a prolific coinage, part of which survives today. This paper uses a hedonic price modeling approach to analyze auction prices of the major coin type of Alexander the Great. The findings make it possible to identify the effects of specific coin characteristics on realized auction prices, sellers' reservation prices (auction price estimates), discrepancies between realized and estimated prices, and the variability of auction prices around predicted prices, or auction price surprise. The findings reveal that similar considerations shape estimated and realized prices, but bidders consistently value positive coin characteristics more highly than do sellers. Realized auction prices, the difference between realized and estimated prices, and auction price surprise are increasing over time, particularly for the highest grade coins.

This paper uses limited-dependent variable methods and new data from Burkina Faso to test the impact of inter-continental and continental migration on activity choice and incomes in rural households. Econometric evidence supports our theoretical expectation that the impact of emigration varies both by migrant destination and production activity. We find no evidence of either positive or negative effects of continental migration on agricultural or livestock activities, and only a small negative impact on non-farm activities. However, inter-continental migration, which tends to be long term and generates significantly larger remittances, stimulates livestock production while being negatively associated with both staple and non-farm activities.

Shadow prices guide farmers' resource allocations, but for subsistence farmers growing traditional crops, shadow prices may bear little relationship with market prices. We econometrically estimate shadow prices of maize using data from a nationally representative survey of rural households in Mexico. Shadow prices are significantly higher than the market price for traditional but not improved maize varieties. They are particularly high in the indigenous areas of southern and southeastern Mexico, indicating large de facto incentives to maintain traditional maize there.

Most economic research on migration impacts in source economies focuses on the households that send migrants and receive remittances, ignoring linkages that transmit migration's influences to others in local and regional economies. This paper offers an alternative, disaggregated economy wide perspective on migration and its impacts. It presents and illustrates a methodology to understand not only migration's effects on migrant-sending households, but also the ways in which these households transmit influences of migration to others in the source economy, via local market linkages. Data from the 2003 Mexico National Rural Household Survey are used to calibrate a series of interacting rural household models nested within a general equilibrium model of the whole rural economy. This modeling approach combines the strengths of micro models focusing on rural households with economy wide models, which highlight economic linkages among economic actors but traditionally have been implemented at an aggregate (national or multi-national) level. It explicitly takes into account the market structures that govern economic interactions and promote or retard the spread of migration effects within sending economies. Simulations reveal that the impacts of international migration and remittances on sending areas may be positive or negative and depend critically on the ways in which local markets transmit impacts among households.

This paper raises questions about the compatibility of "ecotourism" and conservation in the unique environment of the Galapagos Islands. It updates a 1999 economy-wide analysis that predicted that increases in tourism would result in rapid economic as well as demographic growth on the islands. The following six years witnessed sharp growth in tourism; a restructuring of tourism around larger cruise ships and new, larger hotels; and rapid population growth. Our findings indicate that total income (that is, the gross domestic product) of the Galapagos increased by an estimated 78% between 1999 and 2005, placing Galapagos among the fastest growing economies in the world. Tourism continues to be far and away the major driver of economic growth; however, new injections of all sorts of spending, including by government, commercial fishing, and conservation agencies, have had a multiplier effect on income in the Galapagos economy, and as a result, on population growth, via uncontrolled immigration that is theoretically prohibited by the Special Law of the Galapagos to prevent ecological harm to the islands. Further, immigration has diminished the effect of eocnomic growth on household income, creating political pressure to find even more economic development options for Galapagos residents, including commercial fishing. The linkage between economic growth, led by tourism or any other sector, and environmental protection of the Galapagos should be taken seriously when designing and implementing economic development and conservation programs.

Large eddy simulation has been used to study flow in an open channel with stable stratification imposed at the free surface by a constant heat flux and an adiabatic bottom wall. This leads to a stable pycnocline overlying a well-mixed turbulent region near the bottom wall. The results are contrasted with studies in which the bottom heat flux is nonzero, a difference analogous to that between oceanic and atmospheric boundary layers. Increasing the friction Richardson number, a measure of the relative importance of the imposed surface stratification with respect to wall-generated turbulence, leads to a stronger, thicker pycnocline which eventually limits the impact of wall-generated turbulence on the free surface. Increasing stratification also leads to an increase in the pressure-driven mean streamwise velocity and a concomitant decrease in the skin friction coefficient, which is, however, smaller than in the previous channel flow studies where the bottom buoyancy flux was nonzero. It is found that the turbulence in any given region of the flow can be classified into three regimes (unstratified, buoyancy-affected, and buoyancy-dominated) based on the magnitude of the Ozmidov length scale relative to a vertical length characterizing the large scales of turbulence and to the Kolmogorov scale. Since stratification does not strongly influence the near-wall turbulent production in the present configuration, the behavior of the buoyancy flux, turbulent Prandtl number, and mixing efficiency is qualitatively different from that seen in stratified shear layers and in channel flow with fixed temperature walls, and, furthermore, collapse of quantities as a function of gradient Richardson number is not observed. The vertical Froude number is a better measure of stratified turbulence in the upper portion of the channel where buoyancy, by providing a potential energy barrier, primarily affects the transport of turbulent patches generated at the bottom wall. The characteristics of free-surface turbulence including the kinetic energy budget and pressure-strain correlations are examined and found to depend strongly on the surface stratification. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.