Impact of Government Intervention on Employment Change and Plant Closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97

Harris R. and Trainor M. (2007) Impact of government intervention on employment change and plant closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97, Regional Studies 41, 51-63. Financial assistance to manufacturing industry is an important element of the industrial development policy in Northern Ireland. This paper uses the individual plant-level records of the Annual Respondents Database (ARD) for the Northern Ireland manufacturing sector (1983-97) matched to the plant-level details of financial support provided by the Industrial Development Board to examine the effect of selective financial assistance (SFA) on employment change and plant closure. It is found that SFA concentrated on protecting existing, rather than new, enterprises in terms of employment change. Using a hazard model, it is found that the receipt of SFA significantly reduced the probability of plant closure by, on average, between 15 and 24%.

Unraveling EU Policies: the ““Common Basic Principles”” and the ““European Integration Fund”” as a technology of government

this paper is about EU “soft policies” on immigrant integration. It analyzes the “Common Basic Principles” (CBPs) and the “European Integration Fund” (EIF), two devices that have been recently established within this framework. It adopts the theoretical perspective of the “anthropology of policy” and “governmentality studies”. It shows the context of birth of the aforementioned devices, as well as their functioning and the assessment done by the actors implied in the elaboration/implementation/evaluation of the related policies. It is based both on documentary research as well as direct observation and interviews done to the actors implied. It concludes that the PBC and the EIF should be considered as a “technology of government”, that strives to align the conduct of the actors with the governmental aims, as well as it produces specific practices and knowledge. It also underlines an intrinsic feature of many policies: their “congenital failure”, since they are (often) disputed and resignified by situated actors, who are embedded in asymmetrical power relations.

Impact of cough across different chronic respiratory diseases: comparison of two cough-specific health-related quality of life questionnaires

Background: Cough is a prominent symptom across a range of common chronic respiratory diseases and impacts considerably on patient health status.

Methods: We undertook a cross-sectional comparison of scores from two cough-specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires, the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), and the Cough Quality of Life Questionnaire (CQLQ), together with a generic HRQoL measure, the EuroQol. Questionnaires were administered to and spirometry performed on 147 outpatients with chronic cough (n = 83), COPD (n = 18), asthma (n = 20), and bronchiectasis (n = 26).

Results: There was no significant difference in the LCQ and CQLQ total scores between groups (p = 0.24 and p = 0.26, respectively). Exploratory analyses of questionnaire subdomains revealed differences in psychosocial issues and functional impairment between the four groups (p = 0.01 and p = 0.05, respectively). CQLQ scores indicated that chronic coughers have more psychosocial issues than patients with bronchiectasis (p = 0.03) but less functional impairment than COPD patients (p = 0.04). There was a significant difference in generic health status across the four disease groups (p = 0.04), with poorest health status in COPD patients. A significant inverse correlation was observed between CQLQ and LCQ in each disease group (chronic cough r = - 0.56, p < 0.001; COPD r = - 0.49, p = 0.04; asthma r = - 0.94, p < 0.001; and bronchiectasis r = - 0.88, p < 0.001). There was no correlation between cough questionnaire scores and FEV1 in any group, although a significant correlation between EuroQol visual analog scale component and FEV1 (r = 0.639, p = 0.004) was observed in COPD patients.

Conclusion: Cough adversely affects health status across a range of common respiratory diseases. The LCQ and CQLQ can each provide important additional information concerning the impact of cough.