Purpose: This paper investigates the potential wage impacts of a shift to more environmentally sustainable production patterns.Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis is carried out using labour force survey data and interval regressions.Findings: Estimates at the individual level suggest that small wage differentials exist: individuals employed in green industries earn about seven per cent more than those working in non-green industries.Originality/value: To date, very little is known about the characteristics of jobs in the green industry and by extension, the labour force effects that can emerge or change as a result of transitioning towards a greener economy. While exploratory in nature, this analysis seeks to shed light on an underdeveloped area of research, namely, wage inequalities associated with transitioning towards green growth.

Purpose – Remittances are the fastest growing source of foreign exchange earnings for developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of remittances on economic volatility of the receiving country. Design/methodology/approach – A panel of 95 countries over the period 1970-2005 is employed in the analysis. To assess the impact of remittances on volatility a multivariate model is estimated using a panel fixed effects approach with cross-section weights. Findings – The study reports that remittances can play a key role in mitigating the effect of adverse output shocks but exert no significant influence on consumption and investment volatility. Moreover, important differential impacts exist across the various country groupings. Practical implications – Countries that are dependent on remittances may have to monitor and forecast future remittance flows and take these projections into account when making changes to either their monetary or fiscal policy stance. Originality/value – The findings provided in this paper should be of use to policymakers in developing countries.

This article builds on the work of Greenidge, employing structural time series model (STSM) to explain and forecast quarterly tourist flows from Barbados' primary source markets — the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada and CARICOM — for the period 1966:1-2007:4. Results show that the structure and nature of the individual time series components have evolved significantly since the work of Greenidge. Of particular interest, arrivals from the main source markets appear to be less income sensitive. The study also investigates the predictive power of STSM. A seasonal naive model is used for benchmark comparison purposes. We find that STSM outperforms the seasonal naive model in its both multivariate and univariate form.