Impact of policy changes on the efficiency and returns-to-scale of Japanese financial institutions: an evaluation

This paper examines the impact of FSA's (Financial Services Agency) recent policy changes on the efficiency and returns-to-scale (RTS) of Japanese financial institutions including banks, securities companies and bank holding companies. Three kinds of efficiency are investigated namely, technical efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE) using the non-parametric methodology named data envelopment analysis (DEA). The DEA analysis shows a substantial improvement in the overall efficiency of Japanese banks, albeit a significant difference of efficiency scores between the major/city banks and the regional banks. Results are robust to alternative specifications of efficiency and scale changes.

Family food environments as determinants of preschool-aged children`s eating behaviours: implications for obesity prevention policy. A review.

Children's eating behaviours are fundamental to their health. Dietary surveys indicate that children's food consumption is likely to promote a range of diet-related diseases, including overweight and obesity, which are associated with a range of psychosocial and physical disorders. With the prevalence of overweight and obesity rapidly increasing, opportunities for informed prevention have become a focus of strategy. Diet is recognised as important in the genesis of obesity. We present data that demonstrate that eating behaviours are likely to be established early in life and may be maintained into adulthood. We review literature that shows that children's eating behaviours are influenced by the family food environment. These findings suggest that the family environment should be considered in developing obesity prevention strategy for children, yet the current strategy focuses primarily on the school environment. Those factors in the family environment that appear to be important include: parental food preferences and beliefs, children's food exposure; role modelling; media exposure; and child-parent interactions around food. However, the existing data are based on small scale and unrepresentative US samples. At a population level, we have few insights regarding family food environments and consequently little information about how such environments influence children's eating behaviours and thus their risk for obesity. We suggest research that may promote a better understanding of the role of family food environments as determinants of children's eating behaviour, and consider the implications for obesity prevention in Australia. (Aust J Nutr Diet 2001;58:19-25)

Gender blind? Australian immigration policy and practice, 1901-1930

This paper seeks to explore the nature of Australian immigration policies and practices, particularly their impact on women, from federation in 1901 to the cessation of large-scale assisted immigration to Australia brought about by the 1930s depression. The characteristics that influenced and affected female immigrants may have differentiated their experiences from those of male immigrants in the same period. Differential treatment of men and women has often been an unstated given in the formulation and implementation of immigration policies. It was as common to non-government organisations (of which there were, and still are, a great many associated with immigration and settlement), as to governments, both federal and state. Several inequities can be identified in the making and implementation of immigration and settlement policies, and in the access to government grants, concessions and services, not only in terms of race, ethnicity, class or occupation (which is well trodden ground in this field) but also in terms of gender.[1] Such differentiation is part of the broader framework of changing conceptions about the place and roles of women in Australian society and their expected contribution to the nation, but it has remained largely unexplicated in this period and field.

The global biopharma industry and the rise of Indian drug multinationals: implication for Australian generics policy

This article provides a synopsis of the new dynamics of the global biopharma industry. The emergence of global generics companies with capabilities approximating those of 'big pharma' has accelerated the blurring of boundaries between the innovator and generics sectors. Biotechnology-based products form a large and growing segment of prescription drug markets and regulatory pathways for biogenerics are imminent. Indian biopharma multinationals with large-scale efficient manufacturing plants and growing R&D capabilities are now major suppliers of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and generic drugs across both developed and developing countries. In response to generic competition, innovator companies employ a range of life cycle management techniques, including the launch of 'authorised generics'. The generics segment in Australia will see high growth rates in coming years but the prospect for local manufacturing is bleak. The availability of cheap generics in international markets has put pressure on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) pricing arrangements, and a new policy direction was announced in November 2006. Lower generics prices will have a negative impact on some incumbent suppliers but industrial renewal policies for the medicines industry in Australia are better focused on higher value R&D activities and niche manufacturing of sophisticated products.

"As long as it doesn't spill over into class": harms arising from students` alcohol use, and the role of policy in reducing them

While there is considerable evidence about the prevalence of student alcohol use, little empirical work has examined the range and level of exposure to alcohol-related risks facing student populations, and the views of key stakeholders about these. This study was conducted at a large multi-campus university in order to gauge the scale and severity of students’ alcohol-related problems, and ways in which these may be mitigated. Student perspectives on campus based policy making with respect to alcohol were also canvassed. This study utilised a range of evaluative instruments, including standardised questionnaire protocols, structured interviews and focus groups. Data gained from students showed a large level of exposure to alcohol-related harm, and staff informants reported student harms such as drink-driving, interpersonal aggression, social nuisance, inadequate security, sexually risky behaviour, and physical malaise. As a group, students seem receptive to campus-based policies that have a harm reduction focus, but are less supportive of institutionalised measures aimed at the student body. Given the divergence of views about the harms arising from student drinking, and a general repudiation of institutional policy measures which may lessen these, the development of harm-reducing policy on alcohol remains challenging.

Technical and scale efficiency of Islamic banking operations in Malaysia: an empirical investigation with a longitudinal perspective

Against the background of increasing competition from globalization and the trend towards consolidation, diversification and rationalization, the study of efficiency is most relevant in the Malaysian Islamic banking context, where all domestic commercial banks operate Islamic banking schemes. Using the non-parametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), this study investigates the recent efficiency of the Malaysian Islamic Banking system. The attributions of technical efficiency (utilization of capacity) and scale efficiency (optimality of scale achieved) are identified. Further, Islamic Banking Schemes operating under the dual banking system of foreign and domestic commercial banks were benchmarked to the country's two full-fledged Islamic banks to provide insight of the relative efficiencies. Amidst an overall improvement in TE and SE, it was noted that foreign banks (FB) increased efficiency levels to achieve full efficiency over the six-year period, and domestic banks (DB) followed by smaller improvement while the fully-fledged Islamic banks (FFIE) experienced a general decline in efficiency which was solely attributed to scale inefficiency. The findings provide useful guidelines for policy implications and may also assist banks concerned with their strategic planning with regard to the future of Islamic banking.

A chaos theory interpretation of community perceptions of Australian forest policy

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring community values towards Australian forest policy using chaos theory. The use of chaos theory within social sciences has been restricted due to chaos-based analysis requiring time-continuous data. Using scale-based data, iconographs are suggested as a method of dynamically representing community values for forestry at a higher phase plane. In addition, the method also provides opportunity for control of chaos by policy makers in altering community attitudes.

Testing the psychometric properties of Clary's volunteer motivation scale with online panel members

Academic researchers, industry and policy-makers are increasingly using online panels as a means for data collection for their research. Online panels are frequently constituted by volunteers who can choose to accept offers to participate in research (cf. voluntary opt-in Cooper 2000). This research focuses on the importance volunteering as the primary reason as to why individuals decide to become panel members. In so doing, we tested the psychometric properties of Clary et al. 's (1998) Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) making use of confirmatory factor analyses and ascertained that the dimensions exhibit adequate levels of reliability and validity in an online panel member's milieu.

Policy framework for a knowledge society : families and knowledge

My thesis examines the link between families, harm and knowledge in a society where knowledge is increasingly the central organising principle (Bohme 1997: 449-450; Stehr 1994: 6), and represents the capacity for action (Stehr 1994: 8). I observed as a consultant in the 1990s that practitioners in family work were able to articulate what works but often unable to articulate why and therefore unable easily to replicate what works. This time coincided with increasing commentary on complexities of living, capacity of families to cope, identification of the scale of family harm, and use of the term 'the knowledge society'. My aim is to identify why what works, works with families exhibiting harmful behaviours and families acquiring knowledge from learning everyday life skills so as to lead less harmful and more fulfilling lives. And by such explanations inform, replicate and scale up practice to benefit more families exhibiting harm. I conceptualise the outcome as a sequence of family, community and policy work in an ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 1979) within a knowledge society. My method was a year-long action research project with a family support service in New South Wales. I engaged in reflective practice with workers, and a parallel literature review that supported additional reflective practice. I found growing complexity of life requires growing knowledge. I found a distinction between everyday and abstract life worlds, and with families principally acting in the everyday life world. It is a world from which some families and their members seek to escape, often by means of harmful behaviours of neglect, abuse and violence. I substantiated the link that the family support service of my study sees between relationships, behaviours and affects; and I linked this in turn with its therapeutic engagement of the whole family — adults and children, male and female, victims and perpetrators. This engagement involves a process of learning (Rogers 1967: 280) to acquire fulfilling behaviours. It is a process of adult and experiential learning of relationship skills, drawing on under-used reserves of families. Relationship skills form a basis of acquiring other life skills since most require relationships with others to perform life skills. Combining the sequence of family, community and policy work with workers engaging in reflective practice of their work creates capacity for community institutions to replicate and scale up what works and why. Understanding this sequence may assist community institutions to inform policymakers of benefits common to all policy interests of such replication and scaling up. I conceptualise a policy framework of families and knowledge in a knowledge society and two lower level frameworks of process and content of life skills. Implications of these for practice, policy, and theory include a greater distinction between everyday and abstract knowledge and skills; recognition of a sequential process of information, learning, and knowledge; and inclusiveness and fluidity in learning in diverse adult learning settings and in family support professions.

Scales of policy intervention : problematising high poverty contexts in South Australia.

Education policy intervention for schools in high poverty neighbourhoods has focused on the capacity of local schools to make a difference and on the kinds of co-ordinated human services provision that might support individual families with “high needs”. In this paper I suggest that a more detailed analysis of “the problem” represented in such schools might yield a richer and more integrated policy approach. I use the notion of “scale”, arbitrary and imperfect approximations of spheres of activity, and apply it to a specific context in Adelaide, South Australia, to demonstrate the connections between the local school and factors which impinge on its capacities to make a positive difference. I suggest that the implication of the analysis is a more holistic approach to policy.

An efficient adaptive scheduling policy for high-performance computing

The advent of commodity-based high-performance clusters has raised parallel and distributed computing to a new level. However, in order to achieve the best possible performance improvements for large-scale computing problems as well as good resource utilization, efficient resource management and scheduling is required. This paper proposes a new two-level adaptive space-sharing scheduling policy for non-dedicated heterogeneous commodity-based high-performance clusters. Using trace-driven simulation, the performance of the proposed scheduling policy is compared with existing adaptive space-sharing policies. Results of the simulation show that the proposed policy performs substantially better than the existing policies.

Relationships of land use mix with walking for transport : do land uses and geographical scale matter?

Physical activity and public health recommendations now emphasize the creation of activity-friendly neighborhoods. Mixed land use in a neighborhood is important in this regard, as it reflects the availability of destinations to which residents can walk or ride bicycles, and thus is likely to contribute to residents’ active lifestyles that in turn will influence their overall health. Relationships between land use mix (LUM) and physical activity have not been apparent in some studies, which may be because geographical scale and the specificity of hypothesized environment–behavior associations are not taken into account. We compared the strength of association of four Geographic Information Systems-derived LUM measures with walking for transport and perceived proximity to destinations. We assessed physical activity behaviors of 2,506 adults in 154 Census Collection Districts (CCDs) in Adelaide, Australia, for which ‘‘original’’ LUM measures were calculated, and then refined by either: accounting for the geographic scale of measurement; including only the most-relevant land uses; or, both. The refined (but not the ‘‘original’’) LUM measures had significant associations with the frequency of walking for transport (p < 0.05) and area-corrected measures had significant associations with the duration of walking for transport. All LUM measures had significant associations with perceived proximity to destinations, but stronger associations were seen when using the refined measures compared with the original LUM. Identifying the LUM attributes most strongly associated with walking for transport is a priority and can inform environmental and policy initiatives that are needed to promote health-enhancing physical activity.

Proposal of a tiered conceptual framework for sustainable design and planning of large-scale development projects in the metropolitan context

The overwhelming threat posed by climate change means that increasingly, emphasis is being placed on the need to integrate sustainability considerations into all areas of policy making, planning and development. Actors in the built environment are progressively considering environmental and social issues alongside functional and economic aspects of development projects. However, to date in Australia and internationally, there have been few practical examples of integrated applications of sustainability principles in the built environment across design, planning, construction, operation and de-construction phases. Notable initiatives have tended to be narrow in scope, focusing on either mitigation or adaptation strategies. Integrated considerations of impacts from component and building scales to city and regional scales and across physical and socio-economic dimensions are urgently needed, particularly for long-life major infrastructure projects. This paper proposes a conceptual framework based on the principal that early intervention is the most cost-effective and efficient means of implementing effective strategies for mitigation and adaptation. A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) approach is forwarded as an umbrella analytical framework, assembled from analytical methods which are strategically ‘tiered’ to inform different stages of the planning and decision-making process. Techniques such as Ecological footprint, Life cycle costing and Risk analysis may be applied to integrate sustainable design, construction and planning considerations which address both mitigation and adaptation dimensions, results of each analysis ultimately being collated into the overall SEA. This integrated conceptual framework for sustainable, resilient and cost-effective infrastructure development will in practice be applied to assess selected case-studies of major development projects in Australia, focusing on the area of stadium development. Practically applied and timed accordingly, the framework would allow assessments to be targeted towards appropriate decision making levels and enable better decision-making and more efficient resource allocation for major infrastructure development projects.

CAFS : a novel lightweight cache-based scheme for large-scale intrusion alert fusion

In this paper, we present some practical experiences on implementing an alert fusion mechanism from our project. After investigation on most of the existing alert fusion systems, we found the current body of work alternatively weighed down in the mire of insecure design or rarely deployed because of their complexity. As confirmed by our experimental analysis, unsuitable mechanisms could easily be submerged by an abundance of useless alerts. Even with the use of methods that achieve a high fusion rate and low false positives, attack is also possible. To find the solution, we carried out analysis on a series of alerts generated by well-known datasets as well as realistic alerts from the Australian Honey-Pot. One important finding is that one alert has more than an 85% chance of being fused in the following five alerts. Of particular importance is our design of a novel lightweight Cache-based Alert Fusion Scheme, called CAFS. CAFS has the capacity to not only reduce the quantity of useless alerts generated by intrusion detection system, but also enhance the accuracy of alerts, therefore greatly reducing the cost of fusion processing. We also present reasonable and practical specifications for the target-oriented fusion policy that provides a quality guarantee on alert fusion, and as a result seamlessly satisfies the process of successive correlation. Our experiments compared CAFS with traditional centralized fusion. The results showed that the CAFS easily attained the desired level of simple, counter-escapable alert fusion design. Furthermore, as a lightweight scheme, CAFS can easily be deployed and excel in a large amount of alert fusions, which go towards improving the usability of system resources. To the best of our knowledge, our work is a practical exploration in addressing problems from the academic point of view. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Labour productivity measurement with variable returns to scale in Australia's construction industry

As an important productivity indicator, the change of labour productivity is one indispensable marker in determining the rise or fall of overall industrial performance. This study aims to address whether the labour productivity level of the Australian construction industry has, in fact, shown a huge improvement during the last few decades. This article constructs a measuring method estimating labour productivity changes based on the data envelopment analysis technique with variable returns to scale. By adopting a production frontier approach, the labour productivity index can be broken down into components attributable to efficiency change, technological progress and capital accumulation. The numerical results exemplified by a single-input and single-output system indicate that the average annual labour productivity levels of the construction industry are slowly growing in all the Australian states and territories. However, the year-on-year change in the overall labour productivity performance does not maintain a long-term increase over the period 1990–2008. The study forms the basis for further industrial productivity research. Proposals and recommendations are expected to be beneficial for making policy and strategic decisions to improve the performance of the construction industry.