Climate Change and Tourism Features in the Caribbean

The tourist industry is widely recognised as the key engine of growth in the Caribbean, representing a significant source of foreign exchange earnings and employment. The present study provides an assessment of how climate change could likely impact on regional tourism features. The analysis is undertaken by comparing historical tourism climatic indices to those obtained under the various climate change scenarios. The results suggest that the biggest losers, in terms of deteriorations in their climatic features, are likely to be the Caribbean, Central America and South America.Tourism climate index; Climate Change; Caribbean

Credit Booms and Busts in the Caribbean

Since 1970, private sector credit has grown quite rapidly in the Caribbean. More recently, between 2004 and 2006, total real credit in the Caribbean has risen by a cumulative 55.7 percent, or approximately 19 percent per annum. In some countries, the rate of expansion has even been stronger, which is of concern given the likely negative macroeconomic consequences of credit booms. This paper attempts to identify the factors that have led to credit booms and conversely busts in the Caribbean, employing annual data for 13 Caribbean countries covering the period 1970 to 2006 in the analysis. This study employs a panel count data regression approach. Three key groups of variables are considered: (1) macroeconomic developments; (2) macroeconomic policy, and (3) external shocks. The reported results suggest that macroeconomic developments were the main determinants of credit booms in the Caribbean, with low inflation, high growth in GDP per capita, investment booms as well as less developed financial systems leading to the emergence of credit booms and conversely for busts.Credit Booms, Credit Busts, Caribbean, Count Data Model

Convergence of Caribbean Stock Exchanges

This paper uses daily data for market returns as well as for the cross-listed securities on the three main stock exchanges in the Caribbean: the Barbados Stock Exchange, the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange and the Jamaica Stock Exchange to examine the beta-convergence and sigma-convergence of the markets. The results suggest that with respect to sigma-convergence, while the markets are becoming increasingly integrated, the convergence of the returns of the cross-listed securities is debatable, indicating some degree of information asymmetry. The results of the beta-convergence imply that the speed of convergence is still rather slow in comparison to other markets throughout the world

Climate Change and Tourism Features in the Caribbean

The tourist industry is widely recognised as the key engine of growth in the Caribbean, representing a significant source of foreign exchange earnings and employment. The present study provides an assessment of how climate change could likely impact on regional tourism features. The analysis is undertaken by comparing historical tourism climatic indices to those obtained under the various climate change scenarios. The results suggest that the biggest losers, in terms of deteriorations in their climatic features, are likely to be the Caribbean, Central America and South America

Credit Booms and Busts in the Caribbean

Since 1970, private sector credit has grown quite rapidly in the Caribbean. More recently, between 2004 and 2006, total real credit in the Caribbean has risen by a cumulative 55.7 percent, or approximately 19 percent per annum. In some countries, the rate of expansion has even been stronger, which is of concern given the likely negative macroeconomic consequences of credit booms. This paper attempts to identify the factors that have led to credit booms and conversely busts in the Caribbean, employing annual data for 13 Caribbean countries covering the period 1970 to 2006 in the analysis. This study employs a panel count data regression approach. Three key groups of variables are considered: (1) macroeconomic developments; (2) macroeconomic policy, and (3) external shocks. The reported results suggest that macroeconomic developments were the main determinants of credit booms in the Caribbean, with low inflation, high growth in GDP per capita, investment booms as well as less developed financial systems leading to the emergence of credit booms and conversely for busts

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

National energy efficiency monitoring report of Barbados

The Energy Division of the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources of Barbados developed a database that allows for analysis of energy efficiency indicators and the impact of policies on trends in these indicators for different sectors of the country. This data will form the baseline of the energy efficiency campaign launched by the Energy Division and evidence-based policy development. In addition, this exercise is expected to strengthen the institutional capacity to collect, collate and analyse energy efficiency data. This report analyses the information collected for the main sectors of the country, including energy, industry, transportation, agriculture and services, as well as households, and explains the energy efficiency trends in Barbados for the period from 2000 to 2017.Introduction .-- I. Background on energy in Barbados .-- II. Energy consumption .-- III. Energy efficiency .-- IV. Energy efficiency trends in energy sector .-- V. Energy efficiency trends in households sector .-- VI. Energy efficiency trends in transport sector .-- VII. Energy efficiency trends in industry sector .-- VIII. Energy efficiency trends in services sector .-- IX. Energy efficiency trends in agriculture sector .-- X. Conclusions