Using choice modelling to investigate equity preferences

Benefit cost analysis (BCA) is a widely used method of assessing environmental policies. One of the limitations of BCA is the incorporation of equity considerations into an analysis. While this is theoretically possible through the application of distributional weights, this practice has not been generally adopted due to difficulties in determining appropriate weights. This paper suggests that one way of addressing the equity issue is through the application of a staged preference technique to the estimation of equity preferences. It is demonstrated that using choice modelling enables respondents' equity preferences to be elicited and distributional weights suitable for application in BCA to be estimated.

Assessing perceived destination image and brand equity through web 2.0

Social media technologies of Web 2.0 play an increasingly important role in destination brand management practice and the consumer selection of destinations. Consumers freely discuss their travel stories, travel recommendations, travel experiences and attitudes through blogs, forums and social media. This material is read and added to by millions of people and the content has a role in determining the image of a travel destination. Therefore it is critical that destination brand managers understand what is being discussed and written about their destination. What is the content of the Web 2.0 discussions? What are the attributes, associations, experiences, connotations, connections, contexts and ramifications?

Costs of raising equity capital by renounceable rights issues in Australia

Rights issues remain a common method for raising equity capital in Australia for companies listed on me Australian Stock Exchange. This study investigates the capital raising costs of Anstralian renounceable equity rights issues from 2001 to 2006. Both direct and indirect costs are investigated and the explanatory power of potential influencing factors is analyzed. The total direct costs averaged nearly 4% of gross proceeds raised and the mean offer price was discounted around 17% from the current market price. Issue size, percentage underwritten, concentration of ownership and issuer risk significantly influence the percentage direct costs of the rights issue. The age of the issuer, the average historical volume of shares traded and the offer price appear to influence the percentage discount.

What can Hannah Arendt's theorising add to equity policy activism in higher education institutions?

Human rights theory is based on universalistic moral perspectives that regard each individual as a bearer of rights. These rights are often legislated nationally and implementation mandated for institutions including higher education institutions. Arendt contests this kind of governance and ruling. Arendt argues for an agonal politics. Arendt theorises politics and power as something that cannot occur in isolation; it is through ‘acting in concert’ with others that a political community is constituted. Arendt advocates for a public space where people can take care of the ‘public things’ between them to work out how to live together. In this paper I reflect on my role promoting equity within Australian higher education institutions and explore what Arendt’s theorising can add to rethinking this kind of human rights work. Arendt argued that re-valuing politics would pave the way to a ‘new appreciation of human plurality’ (Villa 1996: 17). I will argue that the ‘Fair Chance for All’ (1990) equity policy promoted a form of identity politics within higher education institutions. I argue that Arendt’s theorising can effectively disrupt identity politics and offers a corrective to the way human rights legislation and related institutional policies tend to focus on specific target populations.

Bureaucratic, corporate/market and network governance : shifting spaces for gender equity in education

Education as a field of policy, research and practice has been reconfigured over four decades by economic, social and cultural globalization in conjuncture with neoliberal policies premised upon markets and new managerialism. One effect has been shifting boundaries between, and understandings of what constitutes the public and the private with regard to the role of the state vis-á-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities and civil society and the gendering of public– private relations in and between family and work. Drawing on feminist readings of Bourdieu and critical policy sociology, I consider the implications of a move from bureaucratic educational governance framed by state welfarism to corporate or market governance framed by the post-welfare state, and consider whether particular constructions of globalization and corporate/market governance lead to network governance. Network governance, it is argued, is premised on new forms of sociality and institutional reconfigurations of knowledge-based economies and a spatialized state that coordinates rather than regulates multiple public– private providers. The question is how each mode of governance frames various possibilities and problems for gender equity in education.

A cost-based equity weight for use in the economic evaluation of primary health care interventions: case study of the Australian Indigenous population

Background : Efficiency and equity are both important policy objectives in resource allocation. The discipline of health economics has traditionally focused on maximising efficiency, however addressing inequities in health also requires consideration. Methods to incorporate equity within economic evaluation techniques range from qualitative judgements to quantitative outcomes-based equity weights. Yet, due to definitional uncertainties and other inherent limitations, no method has been universally adopted to date. This paper proposes an alternative cost-based equity weight for use in the economic evaluation of interventions delivered from primary health care services.

Methods : Equity is defined in terms of 'access' to health services, with the vertical equity objective to achieve 'equitable access for unequal need'. Using the Australian Indigenous population as an illustrative case study, the magnitude of the equity weight is constructed using the ratio of the costs of providing specific interventions via Indigenous primary health care services compared with the costs of the same interventions delivered via mainstream services. Applying this weight to the costs of subsequent interventions deflates the costs of provision via Indigenous health services, and thus makes comparisons with mainstream more equitable when applied during economic evaluation.

Results : Based on achieving 'equitable access', existing measures of health inequity are suitable for establishing 'need', however the magnitude of health inequity is not necessarily proportional to the magnitude of resources required to redress it. Rather, equitable access may be better measured using appropriate methods of health service delivery for the target group. 'Equity of access' also suggests a focus on the processes of providing equitable health care rather than on outcomes, and therefore supports application of equity weights to the cost side rather than the outcomes side of the economic equation.

Conclusion : Cost-based weights have the potential to provide a pragmatic method of equity weight construction which is both understandable to policy makers and sensitive to the needs of target groups. It could improve the evidence base for resource allocation decisions, and be generalised to other disadvantaged groups who share similar concepts of equity. Development of this decision-making tool represents a potentially important avenue for further health economics research.