bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
OPEN KNOWLEDGE DISCLOSURE: AN OVERVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE AND ECONOMIC MOTIVATIONS
Authors: Pénin Julien
Published: March 2007

Abstract This paper reviews current literature on open knowledge disclosure strategies used by firms. It is usually acknowledged that for an innovative firm that does not benefit from a natural protection (such as lead time advance) the best strategy is to keep an innovation secret as long as possible or to protect it through an exclusive patent. However, in apparent contrast to this traditional view, many studies suggest that firms often disclose important parts of their knowledge through scientific publications, conferences, the Internet, etc. This paper aims to provide an overview first of the evidence supporting the existence of open knowledge disclosure and second of the economic motivations that encourage rational, profit seeking firms to adopt these behaviours.
What Determines Australia's Response to Emergencies and Natural Disasters?
Authors: Feeny Simon , Clarke Matthew
Published: March 2007

This article examines the determinants of Australia's response to emergencies and natural disasters. It examines the response from the Australian public by examining contributions made to the appeals of the country's largest Non‐Governmental Organisation: World Vision of Australia. It also examines the response of the Australian Government. The data include 43 emergencies and natural disasters since 1998. Results suggest that the responses from both the public and government are positively associated with the number of people affected, media coverage, and the level of political and civil freedom in the country where the event occurred. The type and location of the emergency or disaster are important for the public's response. Differences between public and government donations exist: support from the Australian Government is positively associated with smaller countries and there is some evidence that the public donates more to events occurring in larger and poorer countries.
Changing Skill Intensity in Australian Industry
Authors: Kelly Ross
Published: March 2007

This article examines changes in industry skill scores for Australia for the period 1991 to 2001 using indices of cognitive skill for industry based on Census employment data. Changes in mean industry cognitive skill levels are analysed, as are the relative contributions of changes to the occupational structure within industry and changes to the industry structure of employment. The main findings are that the drivers of skill change differed substantially between the two Census periods. Prior to 1996 the majority of the change was due to shifts towards industries with a more highly skilled workforce. After 1996 changes in the economy‐wide skill level were dominated by within‐industry changes in occupational composition. This coincided with a sharp pickup in the rate of capital expenditure on information and communication technologies. The increasing use of part‐time employment overall had a deskilling effect.
New Governance, Green Planning and Sustainability: Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together1
Authors: Crowley Kate , Coffey Brian
Published: March 2007

Bridgman and Davis

(2000:91) have argued that ‘ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives’. This article compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro‐policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless, both plans have the capacity to ‘green’ state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro‐policy setting. The article encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re‐engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability.
Accommodating Bureaucrats in Canberra: A History of the Commonwealth Bureaucracy's Office Space in the National Capital During the Howard Decade
Authors: Beer Chris
Published: March 2007

This article seeks to explore an important intersection of the Commonwealth's administrative and spatial histories by examining the Commonwealth bureaucracy's office space accommodation practices between 1996 and 2006 in the urban spatial context of Canberra. After initially conceptualising and describing the experience of the Howard decade and contrasting it with previous policy and practice, the article seeks to theorise the general experience of the last ten years through stressing the interweaving of neoliberalism, path‐dependencies, and contingency. In doing so, the piece offers a number of insights into not just the Howard government, the Commonwealth and Canberra, but also of neoliberalism, and the potential impacts of social spaces on policy processes and public sector practice.
Non‐Departmental Public Bodies Under the Howard Governments1
Authors: Wettenhall Roger
Published: March 2007

There has been both continuity and change in the use of non‐departmental public bodies (NDPBs) during the Howard years. In terms of continuity, the statutory authority and its incorporated version, the statutory corporation (in whose development late 19th and early 20th century Australian governments played such an important part), have remained in wide use. In terms of change, however, two other NDPB forms offered some challenge to its popularity. The government‐owned company came to be a preferred form for government business enterprises (GBEs) and, more recently, for many other non‐commercial public activities as well. And the executive agency, first making its Australian appearance in 1999, seemed initially to be another significant challenger, but its numbers, never great, were soon cut back. The article examines these trends, relating them to several relevant systemic inquiries and policy changes, notably the Humphry review of the governance of GBEs, the final settlement (in 1997) of the package of financial management acts, the Uhrig inquiry of 2003 and the system‐challenging pressures that have followed it. Commonwealth participation in joint (Commonwealth/subnational and Commonwealth/private) activities is also noted, as is the lack of ‘fit’ of the Australian experience with international theorising about ‘agencification’. Finally, the article seeks to identify the leading figures within the Howard governments who have been directing both the changes and the continuities involved in these developments.
The Howard Government: The Extent to which Public Attitudes Influenced Australia's Federal Policy Mix
Authors: Lewis Chris
Published: March 2007

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 1996, and why such a relationship is crucial to evaluating policy trends in Australia's liberal democracy in terms of understanding both policy possibilities and limitations no matter how flawed or divisive certain policies may appear to be.
More than Writing on a Wall: Evaluating the Role that Codes of Ethics Play in Securing Accountability of Public Sector Decision‐Makers
Authors: Kinchin Niamh
Published: March 2007

This article argues that the essential factors of a public service code of ethics can be divided into five categories. These categories or principles are fairness, transparency, responsibility, efficiency and conflict of interest. These principles are identified in this article as being the basic elements of democratic accountability in relation to public sector decision‐making. The issues explored are not only the obstacles that the public service decision‐maker faces in internalising these principles but, also, the challenges for a pro‐active management in fostering such internalisation.
Museum Outreach Programs to Promote Community Engagement in Local Environmental Issues
Authors: Lane Ruth , Vanclay Frank , Wills Jo , Lucas Damian
Published: March 2007

Ideas of ‘community’ and ‘community voice’ have been mobilised in collaborative programs developed between the National Museum of Australia and the Murray‐Darling Basin Commission since 1992. This collaboration is set within a broader context of changing ideas and practice around governance, community and environmental issues. The recent Murray‐Darling Outreach Project (MDOP), a series of museum outreach projects with regional communities aiming to increase community engagement in local environmental issues in the Murray‐Darling Basin, is specifically examined. Evaluation research on the MDOP found that the approach to program development significantly shaped the types of voices, range of issues presented and the nature of the communicative forums established. The potential impacts on online audiences are discussed along with broader implications for government agencies involved in community partnerships.
Developments in East Asian Welfare Studies
Authors: Ku Yeun‐wen , Jones Finer Catherine
Published: March 2007

This essay in introduction is to the field of study, rather than to the present, itself distinguished, collection of papers. As such, it opens with a series of ‘flashbacks’: to the ways in which social policy, and the study of social policy, developed out of the interaction between Western welfare states (in this case Britain) and Asia Pacific. The main body of the article then charts the increasing presence of East Asian modes of welfare within comparative social policy, before going on to distinguish between the different types of approach to East Asian welfare study which have so far been adopted. Two sets of three‐part criteria have been adopted for the purposes of classification: focusing first on the dimensions (single case studies of specific countries; East Asia as a region; East Asia in comparison with other parts of the world) and second on the level of issues (matters of policy; of welfare system; of welfare regime) characteristic of each study in question. The article concludes with a restatement of its purpose: not to question the adequacy of hitherto Western (notably, Esping‐Andersen) approaches to the study of welfare regimes, but to demonstrate the need for a substantive extension to their scope.
The Rules of the Game: The Politics of National Pensions in Korea
Authors: Hwang Gyu‐Jin
Published: March 2007

This article explores the conditions in which policy changes occur over time. It studies the institutional pathways taken by national pensions in Korea over an extended period by identifying the key moments which have pushed through their development: initiation (1973), implementation (1988) and reform (1998). Public pensions have developed over time in an incremental fashion, bringing an ever‐growing proportion of the population under their umbrella. What accounts for this development? A number of factors may be at work. The elderly population has rapidly increased; the traditional extended family has increasingly become a nuclear one, meaning that what used simply to be a family issue of protecting the elderly has become a social matter; urbanization and industrialization have resulted in an ever‐growing number of life‐time contingencies such as unexpected income losses. Convincing as these socio‐economic accounts may seem, however, they offer only a snapshot, underscoring the politics of national pensions which stretch over long periods. This article seeks to answer how and in whose interest national pensions come on to the political agenda; how they are framed and defined; and how political actors respond to pressures for national pension reform. In each of the three stages, it is suggested, somewhat different institutional rules have operated. Defining institutional rules as ‘the process of who gets represented in the decision‐making processes’, this article identifies the different institutional rules which have played a pivotal role in the social policy‐making processes.
Advocacy Coalitions and Health Politics in Korea
Authors: Kwon Huck‐ju
Published: March 2007

This article analyses the political dynamics underlying health care reform in Korea after the Asian economic crisis. The reform was a significant volte‐face in respect of the social policy paradigm, which now aims to enhance equity in National Health Insurance. The article pays special attention to the evolution of the advocacy coalition for equity in health policy and how it developed the two attributes required for successful policy change: institutional strength and the elaboration of policy rationale for reform. This process was not a simple linear development but a combination of setbacks and advances. The article also takes into consideration the structural conditions that set the policy environment over the course of the advocacy coalition's evolution since the 1960s. In short, the policy reform of 2000 was not a simple policy change in response to the economic crisis, but rather the outcome of the long‐term evolution of the advocacy coalition for equity in health policy.
The Fiscal Crisis of National Health Insurance in the Republic of Korea: In Search of a New Paradigm
Authors: Kwon Soonman
Published: March 2007

In 2001, National Health Insurance (NHI) in Korea, the social insurance system for health care with universal population coverage, experienced a serious fiscal crisis as its accumulated surplus was depleted. This fiscal crisis is attributed to its chronic imbalance: health care expenditure has increased more rapidly than have insurance contributions. The recent failure in implementing pharmaceutical reform was a further blow to the deteriorating fiscal status of the NHI. Although the NHI has since recovered from the immediate fiscal crisis, this has mainly been because of a temporary increase in government subsidy into the NHI. The strong influence of the medical profession in health policy‐making remains a major barrier to the introduction of policy changes, such as a reform of the payment system to strengthen the fiscal foundations of the NHI. Korea also has to restructure its national health insurance in an era of very rapid population ageing. A new paradigm is called for in the governance of the NHI: to empower groups of consumers and payers in the policy and major decision‐making process of the NHI. The fiscal crisis in Korean national health insurance sheds light on the vulnerability of the social health insurance system to financial instability, the crucial role of provider payment schemes in health cost containment, the importance of governance in health policy, and the unintended burdens of health care reform on health care financing systems.
Full Responsibility with Partial Citizenship: Immigrant Wives in Taiwan
Authors: Sheu Yea‐huey
Published: March 2007

The interrelationship between increased ageing and declining fertility is facing many developed countries with challenges, risks and policy debates around care, reproduction and women's rights. This article demonstrates the special case of cross‐border marriages and the lives of immigrant wives in Taiwan, with a view to identifying their social needs and hence their prospects for social inclusion. It considers the extent to which these immigrant wives have managed to fulfil the dreams of their own native families and/or satisfy the reproductive demands of their ‘in‐law’ families. Issues of women's social and reproductive role, gender discrimination and the unfulfilled rights and ‘partial citizenship’ of immigrant wives are discussed. The author argues that immigrant wives carry full responsibility but possess only partial citizenship. The ideology of the spousal sponsorship regime, which makes the application for naturalization extremely difficult, not only increases the vulnerability of immigrant women but violates their human rights.
East Asian Welfare Regimes: Testing the Hypothesis of the Developmental Welfare State
Authors: Lee Yih‐Jiunn , Ku Yeun‐wen
Published: March 2007

Following the three welfare regimes constructed by Esping‐Andersen, many scholars have addressed the question of whether there may be a further type of regime, differing from the categories of liberal, conservative and social democratic, pertaining to other parts of the world. Discussion has centred largely on East Asia and, in particular, on the notion of the developmental/productivist welfare regime. Yet these discussions have been based more on conceptual classification than empirical analysis. This article attempts to fill in the gap, with reference to the developmental characteristics of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. A set of 15 indicators is developed for the factor and cluster analysis of 20 countries, based on data from the 1980s and 1990s. The results indicate the existence of a new group, consisting of Taiwan and South Korea, which is distinct from Esping‐Andersen's three regimes – unlike Japan, which remains a composite of various regime types. Regime characteristics peculiar to the cases of Taiwan and South Korea include: low/medium social security expenditure, high social investment, more extensive gender discrimination in salary, medium/high welfare stratification, a high non‐coverage rate for pensions, high individual welfare loading, and high family welfare responsibility. When compared with Esping‐Andersen's three regimes, the East Asian developmental regime shows similarity with his conservative model, in respect of welfare stratification, while the non‐coverage of welfare entitlements is similar to his liberal model. There is virtually no evidence of any similarity between the developmental welfare regime and Esping‐Andersen's social democratic regime type.
Protection, Parity, or Promotion: Public Attitudes to Cohabitation and the Purposes of Legal Reform
Authors: DEY IAN , WASOFF FRAN
Published: March 2007

Cohabitation law reform may be informed by different purposes. Three are considered in this paper: protection of parties at risk when relationships break down, parity of treatment between different forms of partnership, and the promotion of particular family forms. These are considered in relation to the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 in the context of recent evidence about public attitudes towards cohabitation. Public attitudes and the approach adopted in the 2006 Act are juxtaposed, raising questions about the alignment of public attitudes and the direction of law reform on cohabitation.
Magistrates, Magistrates Courts, and Social Change
Authors: ANLEU SHARYN ROACH , MACK KATHY
Published: March 2007

Relatively little attention has been paid to lower courts’ capacity to bring about social change, despite the fact that most citizens who come into contact with the judicial system will have their case considered (and most likely only considered) by these courts. Often these citizens experience a range of problems that are social in origin, including precarious employment, welfare dependence, financial hardship, and various health problems, including mental health and drug dependency. Magistrates courts must respond to social change and its human fallout and, in so doing, can contribute to progressive social change in a local, personal, and incremental way.
Beyond Compliance Monitoring: New Strategies for Safety Regulators
Authors: HOPKINS ANDREW
Published: March 2007

Although the advent of general duty legislation makes the task of the regulator far less clear‐cut, inspectorates are still involved in monitoring and to some extent enforcing compliance with rules of various sorts. Monitoring compliance in this way is crucially important, but this article seeks to identify strategies that go beyond compliance monitoring, by drawing on research on the causes of accidents and the nature of organizations. The strategies identified include: auditing the auditors; proactive investigation; supporting company safety staff; advising on organizational design; exposing performance; and promoting regulatory crisis. These are all ways in which regulators can encourage companies to improve their management of risk, ways that are not focused on identifying noncompliance with rules of any sort.
Empowerment of Whom and for What? Financial Literacy Education and the New Regulation of Consumer Financial Services
Authors: WILLIAMS TONI
Published: March 2007

Financial regulators in many states recently have obtained statutory mandates to enhance consumer financial literacy. This paper investigates the development of policy pursuant to such mandates in the UK and Canada to identify how national regulators represent the role of the literate consumer in the financial market place. It finds that regulators in both countries represent financial education as empowering consumers but that each embeds in its policy an implicit normative ordering of responsible consumer behavior. The paper relates the tension between empowerment and responsibilization aspects of literacy enhancement to policy goals of expanding financial markets and assisting financial regulators to manage consumers’ expectations of protection. It raises questions about regulators’ use of consumer education to responsibilize consumption of financial products and calls for further research on the international growth of financial literacy education as a regulatory project.
PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION WITH JUMPS AND UNOBSERVABLE INTENSITY PROCESS
Authors: Bäuerle Nicole , Rieder Ulrich
Published: March 2007

We consider a financial market with one bond and one stock. The dynamics of the stock price process allow jumps which occur according to a Markov‐modulated Poisson process. We assume that there is an investor who is only able to observe the stock price process and not the driving Markov chain. The investor's aim is to maximize the expected utility of terminal wealth. Using a classical result from filter theory it is possible to reduce this problem with partial observation to one with complete observation. With the help of a generalized Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation where we replace the derivative by Clarke's generalized gradient, we identify an optimal portfolio strategy. Finally, we discuss some special cases of this model and prove several properties of the optimal portfolio strategy. In particular, we derive bounds and discuss the influence of uncertainty on the optimal portfolio strategy.
DUALITY IN OPTIMAL INVESTMENT AND CONSUMPTION PROBLEMS WITH MARKET FRICTIONS
Authors: Klein I. , Rogers L. C. G.
Published: March 2007

In the style of Rogers (2001), we give a unified method for finding the dual problem in a given model by stating the problem as an unconstrained Lagrangian problem. In a theoretical part we prove our main theorem, Theorem 3.1, which shows that under a number of conditions the value of the dual and primal problems is equal. The theoretical setting is sufficiently general to be applied to a large number of examples including models with transaction costs, such as Cvitanic and Karatzas (1996) (which could not be covered by the setting in Rogers [2001]). To apply the general result one has to verify the assumptions of Theorem 3.1 for each concrete example. We show how the method applies for two examples, first Cuoco and Liu (1992) and second Cvitanic and Karatzas (1996).
EXACT SOLUTION OF A MARTINGALE STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY OPTION PROBLEM AND ITS EMPIRICAL EVALUATION
Authors: Maghsoodi Y.
Published: March 2007

Exact explicit solution of the log‐normal stochastic volatility (SV) option model has remained an open problem for two decades. In this paper, I consider the case where the risk‐neutral measure induces a martingale volatility process, and derive an exact explicit solution to this unsolved problem which is also free from any inverse transforms. A representation of the asset price shows that its distribution depends on that of two random variables, the terminal SV as well as the time average of future stochastic variances. Probabilistic methods, using the author's previous results on stochastic time changes, and aLaplace–Girsanov Transformtechnique are applied to produce exact explicit probability distributions and option price formula. The formulae reveal interesting interplay of forces between the two random variables through the correlation coefficient. When the correlation is set to zero, the first random variable is eliminated and the option formula gives the exact formula for the limit of the Taylor series inHull and White's (1987)approximation. The SV futures option model, comparative statics, price comparisons, the Greeks and practical and empirical implementation and evaluation results are also presented. A PC application was developed to fit the SV models to current market prices, and calculate other option prices, and their Greeks and implied volatilities (IVs) based on the results of this paper. This paper also provides a solution to the option implied volatility problem, as the empirical studies show that, the SV model can reproduce market prices, better than Black–Scholes and Black‐76 by up to 2918%, and its IV curve can reproduce that of market prices very closely, by up to within its 0.37%.
ON THE TIMING OPTION IN A FUTURES CONTRACT
Authors: Biagini Francesca , Björk Tomas
Published: March 2007

The timing option embedded in a futures contract allows the short position to decide when to deliver the underlying asset during the last month of the contract period. In this paper we derive, within a very general incomplete market framework, an explicit model independent formula for the futures price process in the presence of a timing option. We also provide a characterization of the optimal delivery strategy, and we analyze some concrete examples.
DIFFUSION MODELS FOR EXCHANGE RATES IN A TARGET ZONE
Authors: Larsen Kristian Stegenborg , Sørensen Michael
Published: March 2007

We present two analytically tractable diffusion models for an exchange rate in a target zone. One model generalizes a model proposed by De Jong, Drost, and Werker (2001) to allow asymmetry between the currencies which is often an important feature of data. Estimation of the model parameters by the method of Kessler and Sørensen (1999) using eigenfunctions of the generator is investigated and shown to give well‐behaved estimators that are easy to calculate. The method is well suited to the models because the eigenfunctions are known so that explicit estimating functions are obtained, and because the state space is a finite interval, for which it is known that the method can be made arbitrarily efficient by including sufficiently many eigenfunctions. The model fits data on exchange rates in the European Monetary System well. In particular, the asymmetry parameter is significantly different from zero for three out of four currencies. An alternative diffusion model is presented with similarly nice properties, but with different dynamics that allow constant volatility near the boundaries of the target zone. No‐arbitrage pricing of derivative assets is considered, and the effect of realignments is briefly discussed.
STOCK LOANS
Authors: Xia Jianming , Zhou Xun Yu
Published: March 2007

This paper introduces a mathematical model for a currently popular financial product called a stock loan. Quantitative analysis is carried out to establish explicitly the value of such a loan, as well as the ranges of fair values of the loan size and interest, and the fee for providing such a service.
CORRELATED DEFAULTS IN INTENSITY‐BASED MODELS
Authors: Yu Fan
Published: March 2007

This paper presents an intensity‐based model of correlated defaults with application to the valuation of defaultable securities. The model assumes that the intensities of the default times are driven by common factors as well as other defaults in the system. A recursive procedure called the “total hazard construction” is used to generate default times with a broad class of correlation structures. This approach is compared to standard reduced‐form models based on conditional independence as well as alternative approaches involving copula functions. Examples are given for the pricing of defaultable bonds and credit default swaps of the regular and basket type.
OPTIMAL CONTINUOUS‐TIME HEDGING WITH LEPTOKURTIC RETURNS
Authors: Černý Aleš
Published: March 2007

We examine the behavior of optimal mean–variance hedging strategies at high rebalancing frequencies in a model where stock prices follow a discretely sampled exponential Lévy process and one hedges a European call option to maturity. Using elementary methods we show that all the attributes of a discretely rebalanced optimal hedge, i.e., the mean value, the hedge ratio, and the expected squared hedging error, converge pointwise in the state space as the rebalancing interval goes to zero. The limiting formulae represent 1‐D and 2‐D generalized Fourier transforms, which can be evaluated much faster than backward recursion schemes, with the same degree of accuracy. In the special case of a compound Poisson process we demonstrate that the convergence results hold true if instead of using an infinitely divisible distribution from the outset one models log returns by multinomial approximations thereof. This result represents an important extension of Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein to markets with leptokurtic returns.
Investor Reaction to Inter‐corporate Business Contracting: Evidence and Explanation
Authors: Elayan Fayez A. , Pukthuanthong Kuntara , Roll Richard
Published: March 2007

We examine the stock market reaction to 1227 inter‐corporate ordinary business contract announcements reported by Dow Jones between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2001. Around contract announcement dates, we find statistically significant positive average abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume for contractors, but insignificant positive abnormal returns and negative abnormal volume for contractees. Cross‐sectionally, contract announcement period returns are higher for contractors who are small relative to the contract size, have higher return volatility, larger market‐to‐book ratios and higher profitability. The announcement period returns of contract‐awarding firms are not significant and are only marginally related to cross‐sectional explanatory factors. The results are consistent with two explanatory stories: contractor quasi‐rents induced by the winner's curse and information signalling about contractor production costs. The results are not consistent with perfect competition, with contracts having positive net present values for both parties, and with a version of incomplete contracting theory.
Do Upgradings and Downgradings Convey Information? An Event Study of the French Bond Market
Authors: Dallocchio Maurizio , Hubler Jerome , Raimbourg Philippe , Salvi Antonio
Published: March 2007

This study has two purposes:

To present an alternative method for the study of events related to bond spreads applicable when only a small number of events is available;

To analyse the impact of downgradings and upgradings on the French financial market.

A small number of events can render the use of traditional methods based on the analysis of abnormal returns difficult. We suggest examining the stationarity of relative spreads and dating a possible interruption in the series by carrying out tests in increasingly wider time windows.

This method has been applied to assess the role of rating agencies in the French financial market. The results obtained are, in general, not only similar to those previously obtained in other markets, but also more accurate. The aggregate analysis shows an absence of reaction for upgradings while downgradings determine reaction on financial markets. However, if we expand the analysis to single issuers we find that downgradings had no relevant effect on financial markets in most cases. Only two issuers (France Telecom and Vivendi), with initially good, but rapidly deteriorating, credit reputation, experienced a significant rise of their spreads. In these cases, financial markets reacted prior to the downgrading by the agency. Tests based only on the analysis of the whole events would have led us, in the case of downgradings, to partially flawed conclusions.
The Number of Bank Relationships of SMEs: A Disaggregated Analysis of Changes in the Swiss Loan Market
Authors: Neuberger Doris , Räthke Solvig , Schacht Christoph
Published: March 2007

This paper investigates changes in the number of bank relationships of small and medium‐sized enterprises in Switzerland from 1996 to 2002. It differentiates between overall bank relationships and lending relationships and disaggregates the loan market with respect to firm sizes, industries and banking groups. On average, bank lending declined, and the concentration of lending relationships increased. The changes seem to have been driven by demand and supply for medium‐sized firms, but only by supply for micro and small firms. Supply‐side reductions resulted from a merger and changes in credit risk management by major banks. We find evidence of increasing specialization of larger banks on transaction lending and of smaller and regional banks on relationship lending.
Finance, Banks and the Stability of Emerging Markets
Authors: Lanzi Diego
Published: March 2007

Access to finance and sound banking institutions are two critical elements in any attempt to promote economic development in least‐developed countries. Nevertheless, only in recent years have existing relations between financial liberalization, banking practices and the economic performance of emerging market economies been investigated in depth. In this review essay, prompted by a recent book, “Finance for Development” by Barbara Stallings, we discuss some important issues in this promising field of applied research.
The Contemporary Professoriate: Towards a Diversified or Segmented Profession?
Authors: Stromquist Nelly P. , Gil‐Antón Manuel , Colatrella Carol , Mabokela Reitumtse Obakeng , Smolentseva Anna , Balbachevsky Elizabeth
Published: March 2007

On the empirical basis of six national studies (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Denmark, Russia and South Africa), this paper examines the phenomenon of segmentation, defined as the solidification of deep hierarchies with little crossover between categories of institutions or individuals. The massification of higher education has brought about a great diversity of institutions and, concomitantly, stark differences among the professoriate. While the public sector has to some extent been able to protect its academic personnel, the for‐profit sector is moving towards an unstable professoriate, poorly paid, hired mostly on a per‐hour basis, and for whom sharing in academic governance is a distant dream. Some of this differentiation is emerging also within institutions and a new kind of academic who could be termed ‘just‐in‐time knowledge worker’ is on the rise.
Bringing the State Back In: Promoting and Sustaining Innovation in Public Higher Education
Authors: Bastedo Michael N.
Published: March 2007

Since the well‐known failures of many experimental colleges and programs in the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers and scholars are often cynical about the possibilities for organisational innovation, particularly within public universities. Public university innovation is possible, however, when organisational actors seek to institutionalise reform and use the legitimacy of reform to obtain adequate human and financial resources. An illustrative case study of California State University at Monterey Bay is used to describe how institutionalisation processes can be used to establish, support and expand public university innovation, which may be increasingly crucial to meet political and competitive demands for university adaptation.
Implementation of Cost Sharing in the Ethiopian Higher Education Landscape: Critical Assessment and the Way Forward
Authors: Yizengaw Teshome
Published: March 2007

Higher education participation in Ethiopia is very low (about 1.5 per cent) and is the major source of the critical shortage of educated and skilled human resource. The higher education system in Ethiopia is moving away from exclusive and dismally low enrolments towards increasing participation. To expand access, to redress inequitable subsidies by taxpayers to a small proportion of the age cohort and to diversify revenue the introduction of cost sharing is necessitated to supplement public finance. Cost sharing serves as an alternative non‐governmental source supplementing revenue opening more opportunities and making students responsible citizens and customers. It also has a profound effect on improving the management and academic efficiency of the higher education institutions. In the expanding system, covering the full tuition and food and room cost for a small proportion of the age cohort from the taxpayers’ money is inappropriate and inequitable distribution of resources. A significant number of students are enrolled in fee‐paying programs in public and private institutions.

A modified model of the Australian type Graduate Tax, as a more attractive, simple and manageable scheme is adopted in the Ethiopian higher education landscape. The scheme is expected to ensure equitable access to students of any background, as there is no need to stipulate income of parents to arrive at the repayment amounts. Immediate removal of all subsidies to food and room, calculating appropriate tuition fees and costs, provision of every citizen a tax identification number (TIN) and decentralization and strengthening the tax collection and information system are essential for successful implementation of cost sharing in Ethiopia. These improvements enhance the confidence of both public and university community and improves cost recovery.
Higher Education in India: Growth, Concerns and Change Agenda
Authors: Agarwal Pawan
Published: March 2007

Higher education in India has grown large since the country's independence in 1947. Starting from a small base, the pace of growth was initially rapid. Initially, the pace of growth was rapid. Enrolments grew by 13 to 14 per cent per annum during the 1950s and 1960s. Over the past few decades, the growth rate has declined noticeably. Since then it has remained stable between 4 and 5 per cent. The nature of growth over the past two decades is, however, strikingly different from the growth in the previous period. This article maps the growth pattern of higher education in India with particular focus on enrolment growth and change in funding patterns. On analysis of the trends, it identifies the concerns and builds a case for change in Indian higher education so that the country's virtuous cycle of economic growth fuelled mainly by its large pool of qualified manpower is sustained.
Labour market mobility and workers’ skills in a comparative perspective: exploring the role of unemployment insurance benefits
Authors: Sjöberg Ola
Published: March 2007

This article argues that there might be important efficiency gains for countries to provide generous unemployment insurance benefits. Firstly, generous unemployment benefits might reduce the risks, real or perceived, associated with labour market transitions such as changing employer and/or career. Secondly, such benefits might increase workers’ skills levels, both by functioning as a form of insurance for workers’ investments in skills that are not easily transferable between employers and by facilitating the accumulation of skills that are developed through experience with different employers. These arguments are supported by empirical data, covering 14 countries, from the Eurobarometer survey.
Defining the profession? Exploring an international definition of social work in the China context
Authors: Hutchings Anna , Taylor Imogen
Published: March 2007

Global social work defies concise definition. In this article, the key terms of the definition of social work formulated by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) are critically analysed. It is argued that this definition cannot claim to be ‘universal’ given the assumptions on which it is built and the rapidly changing global society in which social work is undertaken. This is demonstrated in the form of an analysis of social welfare provision and its implications for contemporary social work in China to assess whether the IFSW definition is applicable in this context. The conclusion is that the emerging aims and practice of social work in China are likely to be quite different from those in the West, and that the IFSW definition of social work has value as a point of reference rather than as a definitive definition or a statement of intent. Failure to recognise the limitations of a global definition risks ignoring the lived experience of social workers in China and those they work with.
An international definition of social work for China
Authors: Leung Joe C.B.
Published: March 2007

There are differing opinions on how far the international values and internationally understood practice of social work, as epitomised by the international definition on social work, can apply universally to all countries, notably China. The lack of capacity in the Chinese social work community to develop evidence‐based and adaptable practice has hindered the effective learning and systematic ‘indigenisation’ of overseas social work knowledge. This article argues that the international definition can serve as an active working platform where Chinese social workers and the international social work community can search for commonalities and facilitate mutual understanding. Social workers can only effectively respond to the trends towards globalisation by trying to find out more about their common identity and similarities through interactions, while at the same time showing more acceptance of the differences between countries.
Policy and practices relating to the active engagement of older people in the community: a comparison of Sweden and Australia
Authors: Leonard Rosemary , Johansson Stina
Published: March 2007

This article compares policy and practices for engaging older people in community life in Sweden and Australia. Barriers and support for active engagement through paid work, social activism, volunteering and aged services are compared. Both countries face issues of ageing populations, services for rural areas and people with small needs. Issues for Sweden were the absence of age discrimination legislation, availability of funds and lack of recognition of the growing levels of volunteering. Issues for Australia concerned the new managerialist approach to services, with associated complexities of access and limited social activism.
Has the debate over genetics and extinction of island endemics truly been resolved?
Authors: Jamieson I. G.
Published: March 2007

The relative importance of genetic factors in increasing the risk of extinction has been hotly debated in the past and has tended to be downplayed by ecologists researching the correlates of extinction of island endemics. More recently, Frankham has argued that there is now sufficient evidence to regard the past controversies over the contribution of genetic factors to extinction risk as mostly resolved. For example, evidence indicates that the majority of threatened species including island endemics have a lower genetic diversity than taxonomically related nonthreatened species, implying that genetic factors such as inbreeding can increase the probability of extinction before extinction events occur. Yet, recent ecological research on the correlates of extinction for over 220 species of island birds found compelling evidence that exotic mammalian predators were the sole drivers of extinctions, and neglected to even mention any role of genetic factors. This paper discusses how two research groups working towards identifying and understanding the correlates of extinction for island endemics can reach such distinct conclusions. Part of the reason for the different perspectives is that ecological research has tended to focus on the correlates of historical extinctions of island endemics while conservation geneticists have concentrated on genetic correlates of currently threatened extant species. Identifying whether the population growth rate is positive or negative is crucial to this debate because even the geneticists agree that inbreeding will have little time to impact populations that are declining rapidly due to high predation rates. Inbreeding depression is likely to have a greater impact on extinction probability in species suffering from gradual habitat loss and range contraction, which typify the deterministic causes of population decline in continental species, rather than the intense predation pressure commonly associated with declines and extinctions of oceanic island endemics.
Recent expansion of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1: a critical review
Authors: GAUTHIER‐CLERC M. , LEBARBENCHON C. , THOMAS F.
Published: March 2007

Wild birds, particularly waterfowl, are a key element of the viral ecology of avian influenza. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus, subtype H5N1, was first detected in poultry in November 1996 in southeast China, where it originated. The virus subsequently dispersed throughout most of Asia, and also to Africa and Europe. Despite compelling evidence that the virus has been dispersed widely via human activities that include farming, and marketing of poultry, migratory birds have been widely considered to be the primary source of its global dispersal. Here we present a critical examination of the arguments both for and against the role of migratory birds in the global dispersal of HPAI H5N1. We conclude that, whilst wild birds undoubtedly contribute to the local spread of the virus in the wild, human commercial activities, particularly those associated with poultry, are the major factors that have determined its global dispersal.
Crisis in policy, policy in crisis: understanding environmental discourse and resource‐use conflict in northern Nigeria
Authors: MILLIGAN SIMON , BINNS TONY
Published: March 2007

This article explores the emergence and persistence of crisis narratives in the policy environment of twentieth century Nigeria. It finds that environmental crisis narratives have a well‐established and traceable historical lineage, initially, as continuity between colonial and post‐colonial policy discourse, but more recently with donor agencies gaining increasing importance in influencing and shaping debate. Counter‐narratives are identified, but these lack historical ‘legitimacy’, and often sit uncomfortably alongside donor‐funded initiatives. In light of weak governance systems that impede the development and maintenance of robust data‐sets, the article argues that flawed ‘conventional wisdom’ regarding environmental processes and people–environment linkages will combine to produce a policy environment that could actually constrain rather than enable the improvement of rural livelihoods.
STOCHASTIC ANALYSIS OF INPUT–OUTPUT MULTIPLIERS ON THE BASIS OF USE AND MAKE TABLES
Authors: Raa Thijs Ten , Rueda‐Cantuche José Manuel
Published: March 2007

Although technical coefficients are estimated on the basis of flow data (use and make matrices), they are rarely treated as random variables. If this is done, an error term is added to the coefficients, rather than derived from the distribution of the data. Even so, the calculation of multipliers, by means of the Leontief inverse, is difficult. Due to the nonlinearity of this operation, the multiplier estimates are biased. By going back to the flow data, this paper provides unbiased and consistent employment and output multipliers estimates for the Andalusian economy. Rectangular use and make matrices are accommodated and problems associated with the construction and estimation of technical coefficients and the Leontief inverse are circumvented.