Asian elephants as agricultural pests: Economics of control and compensation in Sri Lanka

Despite growing attention to crop and property damage caused by the Asian elephant, uncertainty exists about the magnitude of this problem. This article explores the nature and, Magnitude of this problem in Sri Lanka. An economic analysis of individual farmers'. decisions to control elephants is provided. Government policies to assist farmers in coping with the elephant pest problem are assessed. Appropriate compensation schemes for farmers are seen as potentially more effective for conserving elephants in Sri Lanka than legal prohibitions on the killing of elephants. The issues raised here have wider relevance than merely to Sri Lanka or Asian elephants.

Globalisation and the reconstruction of the literate child

In New Zealand, the turn from the welfare state since 1984 to a global market driven economy in the early mid 1990s has affected the way that primary curriculum documents have been developed and implemented. Those documents, together with teachers’ handbooks, have in turn affected the way that teachers teach. In particular, the construction of literacy and what constitutes literacy teaching in these documents have affected teachers’ work and have also constructed and are reconstructing childhood and the child literate. The way that teachers teach literacy depends on their constructions of children and childhood and that as their views of childhood and children change, so too do their views of the teaching of literacy. Against this background of locating childhood and children in educational and literacy discourses, other discourses of new technologies, cultural diversity, time and space of “new times” are also challenging the construction of literacy, the literate child and childhood.

Voluntary disclosure of forward-looking earnings forecasts in Australia

This study examines the voluntary disclosure of future earnings information in annual reports for Australian listed companies. We find that most Australian companies in our sample do not provide quantitative earnings, forecasts in their annual reports, although more than half of the sample do disclose forward-looking information relating to earnings, without specifically disclosing point estimates for the future. These companies mostly supply qualitative information with a positive bias, while the remainder of the sample discloses no forward-looking information relating to earnings. Our findings also suggest that larger companies with less volatile earnings tend to provide more future earnings information than smaller companies with relatively volatile earnings.