In the late 1990s the stocks of technology companies, especially those involved with the Internet, were highly profitable. Customers of investment firms requested many more shares of new issues or initial public offerings (IPOs) than were available. Some customers allegedly made questionable...

Following the precedent set by the Virtual Tourism Observatory run by the European Commission-DG GROW a few years ago, several initiatives have taken place to design and manage tourism observatories at both the transnational and local level. However, these initiatives do not yet seem able to...