The influence of educational resources on superannuation investment choices

This paper reports on an investigation of whether educational resources supplied by a superannuation fund provide members with the required information to assist them in making informed choices regarding their superannuation investment funds. The data indicated that certain demographic groups are less likely to utilise the resources provided by their superannuation fund and other information sources. Females, younger individuals, those with low superannuation balances or limited knowledge of financial matters were the key groups identified as less likely to utilise the educational information offered to them.

The criteria of effective teaching in a changing higher education context

The criteria of effective teaching in higher education are understood to comprise particular skills and practices applied within particular contexts. Drawing on the literature and using Australia’s understanding of effective teaching, this paper examines the notion of effective teaching. The paper compares dimensions derived from robust research and psychometric processes with the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s criteria for effective teaching and observes the criteria of effective teaching in higher education to have evolved. While the paper suggests some areas in which future considerations of the notion of effective teaching might usefully focus, it also argues that context is critical and that it is subject to continuous and multiple changes imposed by forces from within and outside universities. The paper maintains that our collective understanding of competent, professional and effective teaching must continually evolve in order that it accurately reflects and continually responds to the contexts in which learning and teaching is undertaken. The paper also calls for an ongoing agenda that continuously investigates and articulates the meaning of effective teaching in a changed, and changing, context.

Shaping an Autralian nursing and midwifery specialy framework for workforce regulation: criteria development

One of the biggest obstacles identified in achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was the lack of available qualified health personal to meet the health needs of the global population. With nurses being the main workforce  component in health systems, the human resource challenge for most  countries is to address the reported shortage of nurses. Skill mix is one suggestion.

In Australia, workforce projections indicated a shortage of 40,000 nurses by 2010. Toward the reform of the Australian health workforce, one project aimed to develop a nationally consistent framework for nursing and midwifery specialization based on knowledge and skills to generate the first national  database iteration for designated specialties. A literature review looked at the way nursing specialty practices were defined in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada. Three international and three national sources of criteria for specialty nursing practice were mapped against each other. The result was six criteria synthesized to define nursing practice groups as Australian  nursing specialties. Each criterion was operationalized with criteria indicators to meet Australian expectations. The nurses in Australia commented on the criteria before they were finalized. An audit of national workforce databases identified nursing practice groups. The criteria were applied to identify nursing specialties and practice strands that would form a national nursing framework. This paper reports on the criteria developed to assess specialty practice at a national level in Australia.

Existence of externalities from investment in higher education research and development

Research undertaken for this thesis supports the underlying claim that education does generate externalities. By examining the impact of higher education R&D on Australian state production, the results suggest that both pure and applied R&D have a statistically significant impact on Australia's regional economic performance.

A comprehensive analysis of foreign direct investment and economic growth

All three frameworks reveal a strong positive impact of FDI on economic growth. On average, economic growth appears to have been driven by FDI, human capital, domestic investment, openness to trade, and economic freedom. However, findings on the impact of growth on FDI are somewhat different across the three frameworks.

Contracting-agency analysis of the association between firm risk, investment opportunity set, corporate governance and firm performance

Tests the efficiency of corporate controls (board monitoring and incentive contracts) for growth or risk firms. By exploring the implications of controls and studying their interactive effects on firm performance, this study demonstrates how and why different firms use corporate governance controls to align managers' and shareholders' interests.

A critical review of multi-criteria decision making methods with special reference to forest management and planning

This paper provides a review of research contributions on forest management and planning using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) based on an exhaustive literature survey. The review primarily focuses on the application aspects  highlighting theoretical underpinnings and controversies. It also examines the nature of the problems addressed and incorporation of risk into forest  management and planning decision making. The MCDM techniques covered in this review belong to several schools of thought. For each technique, a variety of empirical applications including recent studies has been reviewed. More than 60 individual studies were reviewed and classified by the method used, country of origin, number and type of criteria and options evaluated. The review serves as a guide to those interested in how to use a particular MCDM approach. Based on the review, some recent trends and future research directions are also highlighted.

Multi-criteria content adaptation service selection broker

In this paper, we propose a service-oriented content adaptation framework and an approach to the Content Adaptation Service Selection (CASS) problem. In particular, the problem is how to assign adaptation tasks (e.g., transcoding, video summarization, etc) together with respective content segments to appropriate adaptation services. Current systems tend to be mostly centralized suffering from single point failures. The proposed algorithm consists of a greedy and single objective assignment function that is constructed on top of an adaptation path tree. The performance of the proposed service selection framework is studied in terms of efficiency of service selection execution under various conditions. The results indicate that the proposed policy performs substantially better than the baseline approach.

Identification of significant shorebird areas : thresholds and criteria

Aim Conservation managers designate significant areas for shorebirds based on imperfect data. Significant wetlands for migratory shorebirds have usually been identified on the basis of whether they exceed certain thresholds, defined either by total abundance (usually 20,000 waterbirds) or percentage of a population (usually 1.0%). We evaluate the performance of existing criteria and determine if lowering thresholds would improve shorebird conservation without adding unreasonable numbers of significant sites.

Location Australia.

Methods We evaluated the best available data, which is used by managers to designate significant areas, to describe the effect of lowering thresholds on the number of significant sites identified and the number of shorebirds these sites support using a range of thresholds in existing criteria. We also investigated factors which may explain interspecific differences evident when lowering thresholds.

Results When the threshold for total abundance was lowered from 20,000 to 2000 shorebirds, an additional 45 shorebird areas, holding 65% more shorebirds, were identified. When thresholds for the percentage of a population criterion were lowered from 1.0 to 0.1%, an additional 86 shorebird areas were identified which held 29% more shorebirds. The proportion of a species population counted within wetlands identified as significant by the application of criteria varied widely between species. The percentage of population criterion always identified a network of areas that included more individuals of each species than the total abundance criterion at all threshold levels tested. The percentage of species populations found in networks of significant areas showed greater increase as thresholds were lowered for species that were abundant, widespread and well represented at existing thresholds.

Main conclusions Our results suggest lowering thresholds will substantially increase the number of shorebirds in identified significant areas. However, some species will remain under-represented, partly because of interspecific differences in distribution and inadequate sampling of some shorebird habitats.

Harvesting a 'lost' investment : case study of a financial innovation

In the field of Entrepreneurial research, financial innovations have been less studied and reported than product or process innovations. A case example is presented with implications for a large number of firms requiring financial restructuring as a precondition to attracting equity investmemnt. An insolvent asparagus exporter with high growth potential offered opportunity to test a model of financial restructuring and unlisted equity marketing, the ersatz venture capital (EVC) hypothesis. A business plan written in accordance with EVC prescriptions revealed the company's potential and attracted investors. It is argued that the approach may help solve two pressing problems of the Australian economy: re-vitalisation of businesses rendered insolvent by excessive debt and stimulation of a depressed venture capital market.

The demography of investor heaven : a synthesis of international research on the characteristics, attitudes, and investment behaviour of business angels

The purpose of this paper was to compile and compare the findings of all robust international research providing national profiles of business angels (informal venture capitalists). At the outset, it was not clear how comparable studies would be and, as the project advanced, it became clear that few direct comparisons would be possible. Nevertheless, there were broad categories common to many studies and consequently a template was developed and used to summarise each study in a consistent format. The resulting report thus provides a summary of the data across 16 studies covering 9 different countries, with key points from the findings of each study.

This is by no means an elegant report, but the authors believe it is a useful one. It provides a compendium of international angel research neatly bundled in one package. It should benefit anyone considering conducting the first study of business angels for their country or building on research already completed.

Consolidation within the Australian real estate investment trust sector : an evaluation of the impact on unitholder returns

Mergers and acquisitions within the Australian-real estate investment trusts (A-REITs) sector have become a noticeable trend in the last decade. Utilising
event study methodology, 36 successful A-REIT mergers and acquisitions
between January 1995 and December 2008 were examined. Both target and
bidding shareholders experience positive excess returns of 4.27% and 0.54%
respectively over the 41 day event window [−20, +20]. Analysis indicates that the
cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for bidding firms are considerably greater
than previous research suggests. This study finds higher bidder CARs when scrip
or a combination of scrip and cash is used to finance the acquisition. We also find
that the relative size or the size of the acquirer have a positive and significant
impact on the excess returns of bidding A-REITs. This suggests that the
synergistic benefits from the acquisition are a result of economies of scale and
increased market power. There is also some evidence that the relative size and
method of payment influence the CARs of target firms during the event window.

Event study methodology in analysing real estate investment trust returns

This study investigates the influence of cash rate changes on the equity A-REIT stock prices in the past decade. The findings indicate that cash rate changes can influence the fluctuation of the equity A-REIT stock prices. Moreover, cash rate changes affect small A-REITs to a greater extent than large A-REITs.