The relationship between well-being, future planning and intentions to utilise intervention programmes: what can be learned from homeless service users?

There has been an increasing interest in the impact of individual well-being on the attitudes and actions of people receiving services designed to offer support. If well-being factors are important in the uptake and success of service programmes it is important that the nature of the relationships involved is understood by service designers and implementers. As a contribution to understanding, this paper examines the impact of well-being on the uptake of intervention programmes for homeless people. From the literature on well-being a number of factors are identified that contribute towards overall well-being, which include personal efficacy and identity, but also more directly well-being can be viewed as personal or group/collective esteem. The impact of these factors on service use is assessed by means of two studies of homelessness service users, comparing the implementation of two research tools: a shortened and a fuller one. The conclusions are that the factors identified are related to service use. The higher the collective esteem – esteem drawn from identification with services and their users and providers – and the less that they feel isolated, the more benefits that homeless people will perceive with service use, and in turn the more likely they are to be motivated to use services. However, the most important factors in explaining service use are a real sense that it is appropriate to accept social support from others, a rejection of the social identity as homeless but a cultivation of being valued as part of a non-homeless community, and a positive perception of the impact of the service.

Venues on the verges: London's theater government between 1594 and 1614

In 1594, major decisions were made by the governors of London and the country about plays and playing. We need to learn what lay behind these events, such as what led James Burbage to build his Blackfriars theater in 1596. That initial fiasco might tell us much about what lay behind Shakespeare’s decision to join the new Chamberlain’s Men in 1594 and his subsequent commitment to them as a full-time playwright. When the Globe burned down in 1613, a majority of the shareholders decided to rebuild it at great cost, but Shakespeare withdrew. The rebuilding was old-fashioned thinking, reverting to the company’s desire, asserted in 1594, to play indoors in winter, which helps to clarify their decisions and Shakespeare’s own—to write plays rather than more long poems. The few surviving papers of the Privy Council and the London mayoralty from the time suggest that one of the two new companies of 1594 preferred to play indoors during the winter instead of at their allocated open playhouses in the suburbs. They tried to renew this traditional practice, first in 1594 and again in 1596 when James Burbage built the indoor Blackfriars playhouse for them. The renewal of the Globe in 1614 was part of the same thinking, although Shakespeare evidently opted out of the decision.

Advertising America: VOA and Italy

With President Truman’s ‘Campaign of Truth’ in the Fifties, Voice of America (VOA) established itself as one of the most important information programmes of the US government. The 20 million dollar budget allocated to VOA in those years enabled it to employ about 1,900 people and to broadcast in 45 different languages. Italy, with its strong and threatening Communist Party, was one of VOA’s main targets. Audience research however (performed by the United States Information Agency’s Italian branch and by the Italian opinion poll company Doxa) shows that the Italians always preferred their own national network RAI. The US government therefore started to target the RAI, with the aim of placing VOA-produced programmes directly on the Italian network in order to reach a mass audience. This article looks into what went on both ‘on’ and ‘off the air’, analyzing how various Italian ‘target groups’ were addressed by VOA. Drawing on documents from the National Archives and Records Administration in both Washington DC and New York City, and from the Doxa archives in Milan, the study examines how the American government prepared itself to conquer the Italian network RAI.

Community engagement and social organization: introducing concepts, policy and practical applications

This chapter provides an introductory overview of how the term ‘community’ has been conceptualized in sociological literatures, noting that there remains considerable uncertainty with regard to the way in which communities could or should be defined. The chapter examines the salience of underlying concepts of social organization that can shape and influence the extent to which programmes of engagement are likely to be successful. Drawing on recent empirical work some of the key opportunities and challenges for local government in translating the concepts into practice are considered.

Information communication technologies and distance education in Sri Lanka: a case study of two universities

Sri Lanka's participation rates in higher education are low and have risen only slightly in the last few decades; the number of places for higher education in the state university system only caters for around 3% of the university entrant age cohort. The literature reveals that the highly competitive global knowledge economy increasingly favours workers with high levels of education who are also lifelong learners. This lack of access to higher education for a sizable proportion of the labour force is identified as a severe impediment to Sri Lanka‟s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The literature also suggests that Information and Communication Technologies are increasingly relied upon in many contexts in order to deliver flexible learning, to cater especially for the needs of lifelong learners in today‟s higher educational landscape. The government of Sri Lanka invested heavily in ICTs for distance education during the period 2003-2009 in a bid to increase access to higher education; but there has been little research into the impact of this. To address this lack, this study investigated the impact of ICTs on distance education in Sri Lanka with respect to increasing access to higher education. In order to achieve this aim, the research focused on Sri Lanka‟s effort from three perspectives: policy perspective, implementation perspective and user perspective. A multiple case study research using an ethnographic approach was conducted to observe Orange Valley University‟s and Yellow Fields University‟s (pseudonymous) implementation of distance education programmes using questionnaires, qualitative interviewing and document analysis. In total, data for the analysis was collected from 129 questionnaires, 33 individual interviews and 2 group interviews. The research revealed that ICTs have indeed increased opportunities for higher education; but mainly for people of affluent families from the Western Province. Issues identified were categorized under the themes: quality assurance, location, language, digital literacies and access to resources. Recommendations were offered to tackle the identified issues in accordance with the study findings. The study also revealed the strong presence of a multifaceted digital divide in the country. In conclusion, this research has shown that iii although ICT-enabled distance education has the potential to increase access to higher education the present implementation of the system in Sri Lanka has been less than successful.

Microstructure of the Euro-area government bond market

This chapter highlights similarities and differences of equity and fixed- income markets and provides an overview of the characteristics of European government bond market trading and liquidity. Most existing studies focus on the U.S. market. This chapter presents the institutional details of the MTS market, which is the largest European electronic platform for trading government, quasi-government, asset- backed, and corporate fixed- income securities. It reviews the main features of high- frequency fixed- income data and the methods for measuring market liquidity. Finally, the chapter shows how liquidity differs across European countries, how liquidity varies with the structure of the market, and how liquidity has changed during the recent liquidity and sovereign crises.

A dwelling-level investigation into the physical and socio-economic drivers of domestic energy consumption in England

The UK Government's Department for Energy and Climate Change has been investigating the feasibility of developing a national energy efficiency data framework covering both domestic and non-domestic buildings. Working closely with the Energy Saving Trust and energy suppliers, the aim is to develop a data framework to monitor changes in energy efficiency, develop and evaluate programmes and improve information available to consumers. Key applications of the framework are to understand trends in built stock energy use, identify drivers and evaluate the success of different policies. For energy suppliers, it could identify what energy uses are growing, in which sectors and why. This would help with market segmentation and the design of products. For building professionals, it could supplement energy audits and modelling of end-use consumption with real data and support the generation of accurate and comprehensive benchmarks. This paper critically examines the results of the first phase of work to construct a national energy efficiency data-framework for the domestic sector focusing on two specific issues: (a) drivers of domestic energy consumption in terms of the physical nature of the dwellings and socio-economic characteristics of occupants and (b) the impact of energy efficiency measures on energy consumption.

Implementing REDD through community-based forest management: lessons from Tanzania

REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) aims to slow carbon releases caused by forest disturbance by making payments conditional on forest quality over time. Like earlier policies to slow deforestation, REDD must change the behaviour of forest degrading actors. Broadly, it can be implemented with payments to forest users in exchange for improved forest management, thus creating incentives; through payments for enforcement, thus creating disincentives; or through addressing external drivers such as urban charcoal demand. In Tanzania, community-based forest management (CBFM), a form of participatory forest management, was chosen by the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group, a local NGO, as a model for implementing REDD pilot programmes. Payments are made to villages that have the rights to forest carbon. In exchange, the villages must demonstrably reduce deforestation at the village level. In this paper, using this pilot programme as a case study, combined with a review of the literature, we provide insights for REDD implementation in sub-Saharan Africa. We pay particular attention to leakage, monitoring and enforcement. We suggest that implementing REDD through CBFM-type structures can create appropriate incentives and behaviour change when the recipients of the REDD funds are also the key drivers of forest change. When external forces drive forest change, however, REDD through CBFM-type structures becomes an enforcement programme with local communities rather than government agencies being responsible for the enforcement. That structure imposes costs on local communities, whose local authority limits the ability to address leakage outside the particular REDD village.

Can environmental performance rating programmes succeed in Africa?: an evaluation of Ghana’s AKOBEN project

The purpose of the article is to describe and analyse Ghana’s AKOBEN programme which is the first environmental performance rating and public disclosure programme in Africa. Furthermore, by means of a SWOT analysis, the article assesses the suitability of AKOBEN as a veritable tool for promoting good environmental governance in Ghana specifically and Africa in general.

The AVOID programme’s new simulations of the global benefits of stringent climate change mitigation

Quantitative simulations of the global-scale benefits of climate change mitigation are presented, using a harmonised, self-consistent approach based on a single set of climate change scenarios. The approach draws on a synthesis of output from both physically-based and economics-based models, and incorporates uncertainty analyses. Previous studies have projected global and regional climate change and its impacts over the 21st century but have generally focused on analysis of business-as-usual scenarios, with no explicit mitigation policy included. This study finds that both the economics-based and physically-based models indicate that early, stringent mitigation would avoid a large proportion of the impacts of climate change projected for the 2080s. However, it also shows that not all the impacts can now be avoided, so that adaptation would also therefore be needed to avoid some of the potential damage. Delay in mitigation substantially reduces the percentage of impacts that can be avoided, providing strong new quantitative evidence for the need for stringent and prompt global mitigation action on greenhouse gas emissions, combined with effective adaptation, if large, widespread climate change impacts are to be avoided. Energy technology models suggest that such stringent and prompt mitigation action is technologically feasible, although the estimated costs vary depending on the specific modelling approach and assumptions.

Thinking out of the box – skills for work

Since the Dearing Report .1 there has been an increased emphasis on the development of employability and transferable (‘soft’) skills in undergraduate programmes. Within STEM subject areas, recent reports concluded that universities should offer ‘greater and more sustainable variety in modes of study to meet the changing demands of industry and students’.2 At the same time, higher education (HE) institutions are increasingly conscious of the sensitivity of league table positions on employment statistics and graduate destinations. Modules that are either credit or non-credit bearing are finding their way into the core curriculum at HE. While the UK government and other educational bodies argue the way forward over A-level reform, universities must also meet the needs of their first year cohorts in terms of the secondary to tertiary transition and developing independence in learning.

Government policy under price uncertainty: a source of volatility in illegal immigration

In this paper we provide an alternative explanation for why illegal immigration can exhibit substantial fluctuation. We develop a model economy in which migrants make decisions in the face of uncertain border enforcement and lump-sum transfers from the host country. The uncertainty is extrinsic in nature, a sunspot, and arises as a result of ambiguity regarding the commodity price of money. Migrants are restricted from participating in state-contingent insurance markets in the host country, whereas host country natives are not. Volatility in migration flows stems from two distinct sources: the tension between transfers inducing migration and enforcement discouraging it and secondly the existence of a sunspot. Finally, we examine the impact of a change in tax/transfer policies by the government on migration.

e-Government as a regulatory response to the financial crisis: the case of the UK

This paper seeks to discuss EU policies relating to securities markets, created in the wake of the financial crisis and how ICT and specifically e-Government can be utilised within this context. This study utilises the UK as a basis for our discussion. The recent financial crisis has caused a change of perspective in relation to government services and polices. The regulation of the financial sector has been heavily criticised and so is undergoing radical change in the UK and the rest of Europe. New regulatory bodies are being defined with more focus on taking a risk-based system-wide approach to regulating the financial sector. This approach aims to prevent financial institutions becoming too big to fail and thus require massive government bail outs. In addition, a new wave of EU regulation is in the wind to update risk management practices and to further protect investors. This paper discusses the reasons for the financial crisis and the UK’s past and future regulatory landscape. The current and future approach and strategies adopted by the UK’s financial regulators are reviewed as is the lifecycle of EU Directives. The regulatory responses to the crisis are discussed and upcoming regulatory hotspots identified. Discussion of these issues provides the context for our evaluation of the role e-Government and ICT in improving the regulatory system. We identify several processes, which are elementary for regulatory compliance and discuss how ICT is elementary in their implementation. The processes considered include those required for internal control and monitoring, risk management, record keeping and disclosure to regulatory bodies. We find these processes offer an excellent opportunity to adopt an e-Government approach to improve services to both regulated businesses and individual investors through the benefits derived from a more effective and efficient regulatory system.

The dependent variable problem in quantitative studies of Active Labour Market Programmes: uncovering hidden dynamics?

The question of what explains variation in expenditures on Active Labour Market Programs (ALMPs) has attracted significant scholarship in recent years. Significant insights have been gained with respect to the role of employers, unions and dual labour markets, openness, and partisanship. However, there remain significant disagreements with respects to key explanatory variables such the role of unions or the impact of partisanship. Qualitative studies have shown that there are both good conceptual reasons as well as historical evidence that different ALMPs are driven by different dynamics. There is little reason to believe that vastly different programs such as training and employment subsidies are driven by similar structural, interest group or indeed partisan dynamics. The question is therefore whether different ALMPs have the same correlation with different key explanatory variables identified in the literature? Using regression analysis, this paper shows that the explanatory variables identified by the literature have different relation to distinct ALMPs. This refinement adds significant analytical value and shows that disagreements are at least partly due to a dependent variable problem of ‘over-aggregation’.