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The current ecological challenges with an urgent necessity to reduce consumption of energy and resources call for a reconsideration of many aspects of current (western) lifestyles. Since housing is one major source of energy and resource consumption, the development of a sustainable housing provision is of upmost importance. Unfortunately, the public debate is constricted to efficiency and consistency measures, based on technical improvements, which do not question norms and values leading to necessary lifestyle changes. Such a one-sided approach will fall short for various reasons – the most important being the ever-increasing per capita housing space that cancels out efficiency gains. Instead, discussions on an environmentally sound housing provision should consider the concept of sufficiency, leading to a reduction of the physical building stock due to a decrease in per capita consumption. Despite acknowledging the necessity of a reduced per capita living space, the academic debate remains quite limited without offering appropriate systematic strategies. Thus, this paper takes up the instrument of home swapping to discuss its holistic value, adding to the debate on sufficiency strategies in the field of housing. It is shown that home swapping has enormous potential to reduce per capita housing space by better allocating living space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Home swapping" has become more accessible due to a global phenomenon, known as the sharing economy. Technological advancement has removed the barriers to international trade and members of home swapping programmes exchange rights to provide each other with accommodation in their homes both nationally and internationally. These exchanges can be facilitated through the exchange of an incorporeal non-cash benefit, constituting either points or rights and can essentially be seen as a short-term rental agreement. Incorporeal non-cash benefits fall within the ambit of a barter transaction and consequently within the scope of gross income. The main objective of this article is to determine the normal tax implications of a South African resident who owns a property in South Africa, upon receipt or accrual of the benefit of a successful home swap transaction. In order to meet this objective, South African and international literature was analysed to determine the recommended normal tax treatment of these home swap transactions. Home swap benefits were found to constitute gross income in terms of the Income Tax Act No. 58 of 1962. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a Schelling model in an arbitrary fixed network where there are no vacant houses. Agents have preferences either for segregation or for mixed neighborhoods. Utility is non-transferable. Two agents exchange houses when the trade is mutually beneficial. We find that an allocation is stable when for two agents of opposite-color each black (white) agent has a higher proportion of neighbors who are black (white). This result holds irrespective of agents' preferences. When all members of both groups prefer mixed neighborhoods, an allocation is also stable provided that if an agent belongs to the minority (majority), then any neighbor of opposite-color is in a smaller minority (larger majority). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a real-life modification of the classical house-swapping problem that is motivated by the existence of engaged pairs and divorcing couples. We show that the problem of finding a new house for the maximum number of agents is inapproximable, but fixed-parameter tractable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

House swapping, ridesharing, voluntourism, couchsurfing, dinner hosting and similar innovations epitomize the collaborative economy. The rise of the collaborative economy, also known as collaborative consumption, the sharing economy and peer-to-peer consumption, has been fuelled by a range of social, economic and technological factors, including a shift away from ownership towards temporary access to goods; the use of technology mediated transactions between producers and consumers; direct host-guest relationships that contribute to a higher level of perceived authenticity of tourism experiences; and higher levels of consumer risk-taking balanced against mechanisms such as peer-to-peer feedback designed to engender trust between producers and consumers. This paper explores and critically assesses the collaborative economy and its implications for tourism industrial systems. It achieves this by mapping out the current knowledge dynamics characterizing tourism and the collaborative economy, paying particular attention to the asymmetries of knowledge that are emerging. The paper then identifies and critically discusses five pervasive claims being made about the collaborative economy, arguing for a balanced assessment of such claims. Highlighting these claims allows us to pursue a more reflective research agenda and leads to a more informed, evidence-based assessment of the collaborative economy and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary societies have witnessed the expansion of unconventional, non-institutionalized travel trends, which oppose mainstream tourism by providing travellers with a broader range of alternatives. Among these, home-swapping seems to have received little scholarly attention, despite its recent and rapid growth even in countries where this phenomenon had long remained confined to small niches of travellers. With this formula, tourists are able to organize made-to-measure tours without seeking the services of travel mediators and with the only cost of making their own home available. This article presents the results of an in-depth study into Italian home-swappers and discusses their socio-economic profiles, motivations, and lifestyles. As the data analysis points out, home-swapping is an alternative form of tourism which requires trust, open-mindedness, inventiveness, enthusiasm, and flexibility. While the economic aspect is arguably one of the key driving factors when opting for this type of travelling accommodation, it cannot account for the current popularity of the social phenomenon alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine home swap – a form of non-commercial hospitality that has witnessed a great expansion in the last decade. In conjunction with prior writings on various subjects related to home swap, this study can be utilised in compiling a preliminary conceptualisation of home swapping, as a form of non-commercial hospitality, with its own characteristics. In particular this study identifies six dimensions of home swap, namely (a) escape of the market, (b) asymmetric exchanges, (c) need for trustiness, (d) use of a hospitality exchange network, (e) demand for domesticity and (f) quest to experience local authenticity. The results of this study are being utilised to construct a preliminary conceptualisation of home swapping as a distinct vacation alternative building on old virtues and using new technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30 percent, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They could have filed bankruptcy, discharged the negative equity, committed to pay the mortgage holders the full values of their homes, and retained those homes. In Nobelman, however, the Court misinterpreted reasonably clear statutory language and invented legislative history to resolve a three-to-one split of circuits in favor of the minority view that debtors could not modify even the unsecured portions of the mortgages on their principal residences. Courts and commentators have since assumed that modifying home mortgages in bankruptcy is impossible. This Article presents a legal strategy for modifying home mortgages despite Nobelman. The strategy requires that debtors move out of their houses, lease the houses for one year, file bankruptcy, and propose mortgage modification plans that pay mortgage holders the full current values of the houses. This Article argues that despite the artificiality of a move-out with the intention to return, bankruptcy judges will approve the modification plans. The judges will do so because existing precedent requires approval and because the modification plans will be in the best interests of not only the debtors but also the mortgage holders and the American economy. The strategy will enable hundreds of thousands of homeowners to retain homes they would otherwise have lost to foreclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze centralized housing markets under the existence of feasibility constraints on the number of agents and objects involved in the exchanges. We focus on an incomplete information setting where only the information about how each agent ranks her endowment is private. We show that under non-degenerate ex-ante probability distributions over preference profiles, no rule satisfies the joint requirements of individual rationality, (constrained) efficiency, and ordinally Bayesian incentive compatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Information about accommodations for travelers to Mexico, from a chapter of the book "Frommer's Mexico, 2008" is presented. It discusses the Stars and Diamonds hotel rating system in Mexico as well as hotel rates and reservations. It mentions popular hotel chains in the country, including Brisas Hotels & Resorts, Fiesta Americana, and Fiesta Inn. It is noted that house and villa rentals and swaps are becoming more common in Mexico.

The Swedish rent control system creates a white market for swapping rental contracts and a black market for selling rental contracts. Empirical data suggests that in this black-and-white market some people act according to utility functions that are both discontinuous and locally decreasing in money. We discuss Quinzii's theorem for the nonemptiness of the core of generalized house-swapping games, and show how it can be extended to cover the Swedish game. In a second part, we show how this theorem of Quinzii and her second theorem on nonemptiness of the core in two-sided models are both special cases of a more general theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines network exchange among Russian households. The network exchange among Russians is one of reciprocity, where individuals give gifts to each other with the expectation that generosity will be returned. This barter economy has enabled Russians to survive through severe economic problems through which the country has gone. The author shows how the exchange system works and the obligations it imposes on the receivers. It is based on kinship and friendship and is not meant to prosper one above the other.

The article presents a discussion on comments made by Michelle J. White and Bruce Hamilton on an article titled "Wasteful Commuting," written by the author. The author presented estimates that suggested that almost 90 percent of urban commuting could be eliminated by reassigning workers to different houses or jobs. Furthermore, he argued that this minimum feasible commute is the volume of commuting that would emerge from the optimization process underlying the standard monocentric models, even allowing for decentralized employment. White has challenged some of his assumptions as well as his results. With respect to assumptions, White argues that suburban employment is not diffuse, but is concentrated in subcenters. If these subcenters are a significant portion of suburban employment, then the author's estimates of required commuting are biased downward because the commuting pattern that he assumed to be optimal is not feasible. White then estimates required and wasteful commuting based on journey to work data from the 1980 census. On the basis of these data, she concludes that only about 10 percent of commuting could be eliminated by swapping homes and jobs.

The article presents tips on accommodations in Mexico. Many hotels that have excellent standards are not certified, but all rated hotels adhere to strict standards. Among the hotel chains in Mexico include Brisas Hotels & Resorts, Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Inn, and Hoteles Camino Real. House and villa rentals and swaps are becoming more common in Mexico, but no single recognized agency or business provides this service exclusively for Mexico.