Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Who ought to receive what? An instrument to assess a community's preferred strategy for allocating leisure service resources

All are likely to agree that resources for public leisure services should be allocated equitably, that is, fairly. Equity is a pseudo-cognate term in that many who use it assume that everyone has the same intuitive definition of it. This is a fallacious assumption. There are multiple and diverse interpretations of what is meant by equity. Since interpretations reflect value systems, they are likely to vary across communities. This article develops an instrument that will enable professionals to identify the preferred interpretation in their community. It proposes a taxonomy of five broad equity perspectives with nine operationalisations of the construct. A classic scale development procedure was used to measure the nine operational strategies. The empirical procedures failed to develop measures for two of the operationalisations but they verified the reliability, dimensionality and validity of 23 items measuring the remaining seven equity operationalisations: Economically Disadvantaged, Equality, Taxes Paid, Direct Price, Efficiency, Advocacy and Professional Judgement.
Linking network targets and site capabilities: A conceptual framework to determine site contributions to strategic manufacturing network targets

Purpose – To cope with the increasing challenges of globalisation, various manufacturing companies have established intra-company manufacturing networks. The purpose of this paper is to link the strategic network targets (i.e. accessibility, thriftiness represented by economies of scale and economies of scope, mobility, and learning) with the capabilities and characteristics of the constituting sites of the manufacturing network and thus facilitate the identification of mismatches and the discussion of possible development paths for the network. Design/methodology/approach – The authors derive a conceptual framework from the literature which is tested with a single case; a manufacturing network consisting of eight manufacturing sites. Case data were collected based on 24 interviews with operations managers at network level and a standardised online survey among the sites’ management teams. Findings – Results indicate that manufacturing network and site levels need to be related when striving for a fit bet.
Vicarious Extinction of Avoidance Behavior through Films: An Initial Test

In a recent study, Bandura, Grusec, and Menlove (1967) provided evidence that children's phobias may be vicariously extinguished through the direct observation of a fearless peer model. Groups of preschool children who displayed a considerable fear of dogs observed another child make progressively longer and more active advances to a live dog during eight modeling sessions. Control groups met for an equal number of sessions but were not exposed to the model's performance. The modeIing procedures proved to be highly effective in increasing these children's willingness to approach dogs when compared to the controls. The present study was designed to explore the possibiliry that a similar effect can be produced with filmed rather than live models. Assessment of avoidance behavior, both before and after the presentation of modeling films, was made by asking the children to stand at the distal end of an 18-ft. runway which led to a play pen containing a large German shepherd. The children were asked to "walk toward the dog as close as you want to go" and, if they approached to zero feet, were asked to pet the dog and feed him a piece of frankfurter. Of 40 preschool boys thus tested, 18 did not initially approach to zero feet. These children were divided into two groups, matched for initial avoidance, and used for the remainder of the experiment. The nine male Ss in the film-modeling group saw an 11-min. color film sequence depicting a series of interactions between a large German shepherd and another child of their age and sex. The control group, matched for initial avoidance of dogs, was not exposed to this manipulation. The film, which was accompanied by a sound-track, was analogous to the procedures used by Bandura, et al., in that the modeled aversive stimuli gradually increased in intensity. Thus, the first scene of the film shows Peter, who is 10-yr. -old, playing with the dog, "Champie. " Then Eric, aged 4, gradually approaches Champie and is only later shown interacting vigorously with him. The final scenes show Eric and Peter playing together with Champie. The subsequent post-test revealed that eight of the nine boys in the film group were now willing to approach, pet, and feed the live dog. Only three of the nine boys in the control group approached to zero feet during this post-test. A Fisher's Exact Test reveals a probability of . 03 for this difference between groups (or one more suggestive) occurring by chance. These findings are, of course, no more than an initial demonstration. An extensive research program is planned to provide a detailed examination of the possibilities and limitation of "film-therapy" of the rype described in this report. '
Perceptions of Economic Insecurity: Evidence from Russia

Economic insecurity is an inherent characteristic of the transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented economy and workers' assessments of their economic insecurity have direct consequences not only for their happiness/well-being, but also on consumption and saving behavior. This study utilizes data from the nationally representative Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to study perceptions of economic insecurity among workers in both rural and urban settlements. Analyzing three measures of perceived economic insecurity, we find that perceptions of insecurity were higher when economic conditions were deteriorating (1995-1998), and lower when economic conditions had stabilized (2000-2004). While perceived insecurity varies substantially by worker characteristics-those with less education, women, and unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers feel most vulnerable-, differences in observed characteristics explain a relatively small part of the ruralurban perceptions gap; other factors, such as different rates of economic recovery in rural and urban locales are also important. Individual well-being and household consumption tend to be lower when concerns about economic insecurity are present.
Working Capital and Financial Management Practices in the Small Firm Sector

MICHAELJ. PEEL IS A LECTURER IN accountancy and finance at Cardiff Business School, University of Wales, and Nicholas Wilson is Professor of Credit Management at the University of Bradford, England. Very little research has been conducted on the capital budgeting and working capital practices of small firms. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a preliminary study on the working capital and financial management practices of a sample of small firms located in the north of England. In general, the results of the survey indicated that a relatively high proportion of small firms in the sample claimed to use quantitative capital budgeting and working capital techniques and to review various aspects of their companies' working capital. In addition, the firms which claimed to use the more sophisticated discounted cash flow capital budgeting techniques, or which had been active in terms of reducing stock levels or the debtors' credit period, on average tended to be more active in respect of working capital management practices. It is hoped that the issues raised will stimulate further theoretical and empirical contributions on this neglected and important area of small business research.
Antecedents and Consequences of Work Engagement Among Frontline Employees in Turkish Hotels

Frontline service employees in the hospitality and tourism sector have a key role in creating high-quality customer service. This research considers potential antecedents and consequences of work engagement in a sample of 549 frontline service employees working in 15 top quality hotels in Turkey, a 59% response rate. Respondents completed anonymous questionnaires. Respondents reported lower levels of work engagement compared to normative data reflecting the way that frontline service work has been portrayed (low pay, long hours, and autocratic supervision). Personal demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, level of education) and work situation characteristics (e.g., job tenure, size of property) were weakly and inconsistently related to levels of work engagement. Consistent with previous studies, work engagement was significantly related to job satisfaction, employee use of voice behavior, intent to stay, and lower levels of work-family and family work conflict Practical implications and practical suggestions for enhancing levels of work engagement are offered.
The Vanishing Killer: Japan’s Postwar Homicide Decline

Despite claims about the 'collapse' of public safety in Japan, the country has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. Moreover, Japan's homicide rate has fallen about 80% in the last 50 years. A decline of this magnitude has not been observed in any other nation. The proximate cause of the decrease is young Japanese males, who now commit one-tenth as many homicides as their counterparts did in 1955. This article describes postwar Japan's homicide decline and critically examines two attempts to explain it. The conclusion connects homicide to suicide, a second form of lethal violence. Notwithstanding Japan's low homicide rate, its total rate of lethal violence (homicide + suicide) exceeds lethal violence rates in other industrialized nations.
Dynamic Reallocation of Marketable Nitrogen Emission Permits in Danish Freshwater Aquaculture

ABSTRACT The potential gains from a regulatory change allowing for reallocation of marketable nitrogen emission permits under a cap and trade system are analyzed in a dynamic context using Data Envelopment Analysis to formulate linear programming models. In these models new, more environmental friendly farms are gradually introduced to the industry over 10 years. The new industry structure, production, and profitability gains are investigated, and the effect of changing the overall level of nitrogen emission is analyzed. Our results show that there is scope for a more efficient allocation of resources to either increase the production level or to reduce the emission level. This article adds to the literature by extending previous static reallocation models to a dynamic model, which allows for a gradual introduction of new firms. This makes it possible for managers to analyze the effects of reallocating production across firms and time. JEL Codes: Q22, Q28, D62.
Leveraging enterprise risk management (ERM) for boosting competitive business advantages in Bahrain

Purpose – Recently, the energetic and enormously competitive business environment has seen a stage of failure, from natural disasters to business crisis. Global competition and economic instability leads to errors, to unsuccessful business decisions, to defective performance and, finally, to failure. Conversely, effective anticipation of emerging risks can yield competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is to measure a proposed conceptual research model, based on various existing ERM frameworks.Design/methodology/approach – The current study measures a proposed conceptual research model, based on various existing ERM frameworks, which provides a wide range of consulting services that assist companies in boosting competitive business advantage using enhanced risk response capabilities. Due to the nature of the current study and its hypothesis, the primary research purpose is, thus, explanatory. This model was empirically tested to measure the five proposed variables: identifying risks, estimating risks,.
Italian bipolarism and the elections of 2006. End of the line or just a connecting stop?

Abstract The recent Italian elections have taken place under a new proportional system, but have confirmed and even strengthened the main trends already at work since the beginning of Italy's political transition. The center-left coalition has won by the slightest margin, thus ensuring the third alternation in power since 1994. The system's extreme competitiveness underscores its full-fledged bipolar format, the eclipse of center parties, and the continuing electoral stagnation and political integration of extreme left and right. These trends coexist with a party system fragmentation whose level is within the standard of other European systems of moderate pluralism and this fragmentation is, moreover, kept at bay by the coordination ensured by the majority bonus seats provided through the electoral law. At the same time, the main parties show persistently low levels of structural consolidation, that tend to hinder the stability and effectiveness of coalition cabinets. This problem might paradoxically have been sharpened by systemic competitiveness through a negative impact on coalitional discipline and the maximization of destabilizing effects of the smallest changes in electoral and parliamentary behavior.
The Influence of Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Information Adoption in Online Customer Communities

Abstract This study focuses on the information adoption behaviours in online communities, and investigates how such behaviours affect the purchase intention of consumers. A research model was constructed to investigate the impact of electronic word-of-mouth on information adoption in online customer communities. A survey was conducted using a sample of 100 respondents and a partial least squares approach was used to validate the research model. The research results concluded that timeliness and comprehensiveness of information, trustworthiness and quality of information have positive influence on information usefulness, which in turn predicts the consumer purchase intention.
Child Care Workers: High Demand, Low Wages

This article provides an overview of child care employment, identifying its key characteristics and issues impeding the development of a skilled and stable workforce to meet the need for quality early care and education services. Characteristics of child care jobs are summarized, including information about poverty-level earnings, poor benefits, unequal opportunity, and high turnover. Market pressures that depress wages in this sector are explored with particular attention to the impact of welfare reform. Also reviewed are institutional barriers to improving child care jobs, such as insufficient funding, lack of organizational representation, a stark resistance to national program standards, and unsupportive reimbursement and funding policies. The article concludes with highlights of current initiatives to improve child care jobs, including the North Carolina scholarship program, the U.S. Army Child Development Services' Caregiver Personnel Pay Plan, Head Start quality improvement efforts, mentoring and apprentice programs, grant programs, and union and community organizing.
Imperfect Competition and the Resource Allocative Effects of Effective Protection: Comment

Recently in this review, E. J. Ray (1976a) demonstrated two propositions concerning the impact of effective protection on resource allocation under imperfect competition in goods and factor markets. He provided an incorrect proof of his second (correct) proposition, and failed to place it in perspective. In this comment we provide an intuitively appealing but rigorous derivation of it, and note that it follows from Herberg and Kemp (1971), and is equally valid when there are no interindustry flows. ' In the second section of his paper,2 Ray investigates the case in which a labour union in the manufacturing sector, X1, successfully maintains industrial wages, wl, at some constant multiple, b, times wages, w2, in the agricultural sector, X2. He assumes labour and capital are substitutable for one another in the production of value added in each sector and that to produce one unit of output for each good a fixed amount of the other is used as an input. Thus al2 is the number of units of X1 used as an input in producing one unit of X2 and a2l is the number of units of X2 used as input in producing one unit of output of XI. With this model Ray shows that changes in relative prices can have perverse effects on outputs. This is not surprising, for as Fishlow and David (1961) and Bhagwati and Ramaswami (1963) have noted and Johnson (1966) has shown, in the presence of a fixed relative wage differential the production possibility frontier may become unconventionally convex to the origin, and when the frontier is convex, one would not be surprised to find that the output of a good falls in response to a rise in its relative price. The problem is, however, more complex than that, because with a factor market distortion, the slope of the production possibility frontier will not be equal to the price ratio. In fact, as Herberg and Kemp (1971, p. 22) have shown in the context of the Ray model, with CES production functions and all aij's equal to zero, " it is possible for the price-output relationship to be normal or conventional even when the locus of competitive outputs is (unconventionally) convex to the origin ". 3 Moreover, as we have shown in an unpublished paper, in this same model with zero a's and variable elasticities of substitution, movement in the priceoutput ratio can be perverse whether the locus of competitive outputs is convex or concave. Thus we must look elsewhere for an explanation. Let:
Pharmacokinetics and tolerance of ciprofloxacin after sequential increasing oral doses

The pharmacokinetics and safety of orally administered ciprofloxacin (Bay o 9867) were examined in 12 healthy male volunteers who received sequential doses of 250, 500, 750, and 1,000 mg. The individual and mean data were best described by biexponential disposition and elimination, assuming an apparent zero-order rate of absorption. The peak serum concentrations determined from the individual data occurred at approximately 1.5 h after each dose and ranged from 0.42 to 4.2 micrograms/ml; the mean peak concentrations increased in proportion to the dose. The areas under the curve determined from the mean data were also proportional with respect to dose. The mean elimination half-lives calculated from pooled data were 4.1, 4.1, 6.9, and 6.3 h for doses of 250, 500, 750, and 1,000 mg, respectively. Longer half-lives but proportional area-under-the-curve values after the 750- and 1,000-mg doses implied that smaller fractions of ciprofloxacin were absorbed after these doses, although nonlinear kinetics could not be ruled out. The mean serum concentrations 12 and 24 h following each dose were greater than or equal to 0.08 and 0.01 micrograms/ml, respectively. The urinary concentrations ranged from 30 to 500 micrograms/ml for at least 12 h after administration and were greater than or equal to 9 micrograms/ml at 24 h following each dose. The urinary recovery level of unchanged ciprofloxacin over a 24-h period ranged from 28 to 44%. The mean renal clearances for each dose ranged from 300 to 500 ml/min. Ciprofloxacin was well tolerated, and no significant clinical or laboratory abnormalities were observed.
Efficiency Gains in Unsuccessful Management Buyouts

This article uses a sample of 120 unsuccessful management buyouts to test whether operational improvements following successful management buyouts are a result of organizational changes or private information. The findings are consistent with the organizational changes hypothesis. Firms with an unsuccessful management buyout had no increase in operating performance following the buyout attempt. In addition, the cumulative abnormal stock return from before the attempted buyout until two years after the attempt is insignificantly different from 0 percent. The author also finds that management turnover following an unsuccessful management buyout is significantly higher than normal. Copyright 1994 by American Finance Association.
Risk and Aversion in Assessing Climate Policy

The precise consequences of climate change remain uncertain. We incorporate damage uncertainty into a joint model of climate and the economy, an integrated assessment model. First, both the science and the integrated assessment community analyze uncertainty by means of sensitivity analysis and Monte-Carlo simulations. These methods have serious limitations in deriving a carbon tax or cap under uncertainty: they do not incorporate the interaction between stochastic climate impacts and economic policy. We derive the optimal climate policies accounting for the full interaction between uncertain damage realizations, optimal policy response, and climatic feedback. Second, state of the art integrated assessment relies on the standard economic model. Modern decision theory and its applications to finance show that this discounted expected utility model is incapable of simultaneously capturing adequate risk premia and a reasonable discount rate, leading to the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles. We follow the finance literature in disentangling risk aversion from the propensity to smooth consumption over time, which gives rise to a model reflecting correctly the risk-free discount rate and the risk premia. We find that optimal mitigation efforts are twice as high in the comprehensive risk model as compared to the entangled standard model.
The Equity Impact of the Value-Added Tax in Bangladesh

This paper investigates the income distributional implications of different value-added tax (VAT) schemes in Bangladesh. The results indicate that a revenue-neutral uniform VAT is regressive (relative to the pre-reform situation) in its impact on the income of different households. This paper explores the income distributional impact of an alternative policy package, consisting of a basic rate of VAT with exemptions and excise taxes for certain commodity groups, chosen on the basis of their distributional characteristics. The welfare consequences of the alternative package are found to be superior to those of the uniform VAT.
Addressing ICT curriculum recommendations from surveys of academics, workplace graduates and employers

This project is based on selected recommendations of the information and communications technology (ICT) scoping study undertaken by Koppi and Naghdy in 2009, in particular: improving community perceptions of the ICT profession (recommendation two); understanding students better in relation to attrition, women in ICT and gender inclusive pedagogy (recommendation four); further investigations of work integrated learning (recommendation six); and improving the understanding between the teaching-research-industry-learning nexus (recommendation eight). The project team formulated these recommendations into five key project areas: perceptions; attrition; gender; teaching-research-industry-learning nexus; and work integrated learning. This report summarises the main findings from each project area and then presents conclusions and recommendations pertinent across the five areas.
Re-emergence of Suburbia: The Case of Izmir Turkey

In Turkey, suburbia has become a subject of debates since the 1990s relative to the reconfiguration of urban environments due to transnational economic relations, formation of new upper income groups, social polarization and changing consumption habits. With the help of a case study in the city of Izmir, this paper examines the extent of suburbanization in Turkey in relation to the theoretical works about this subject. The studies have shown that the emergence of suburbia in Izmir goes back to the periods of integration to the capitalist economy during the seventeenth century. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon type suburbia in Izmir has reemerged especially in the recent decades and along the motorways to the city. However, this paper claims that these areas are not fully established in the case of Izmir due to costs of suburban life and lack of social and infrastructural facilities.