981 resultados para Labor policies
Resumo:
Market principles now dominate the education and social policies of many Anglophone countries, including Australia, but articulate differentially within specific contexts. Existing historical legacies, local economic and social conditions, and geographical settings interact with federal and state funding and transport policies to shape the nature of regional education markets and the choices families make in a rural school market in Australia. Through two school case studies, this article explores the effects of policy shifts on parental choice and student movement within a regional Victorian community. Informed by policy sociology, the article views the policy as a dynamic, often ad hoc process with contradictory effects. It indicates how an ensemble of federal and state funding and conveyancing policies enable some schools to develop marketing practices that reconstruct the local education market to their advantage through the introduction of transport and flexi-boarding policies. It demonstrates that education markets are not confined to urban settings and that while choice is not a new phenomenon in this rural area, federal and state funding and transport policies have reconfigured local markets and intensified the market work undertaken by schools and parents with, in this instance, unequal effects on the provision of schooling in a rural region.
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Australia's retirement policies are geared to shifting reliance from the Age Pension to private superannuation, predominately via the use of tax expenditures. This article examines tax expenditures in this area and concludes that inequities and inefficiencies abound. Reform is required. It is argued that the functions of revenue collection and social support should be separated, and the use of tax expenditures in superannuation should be discarded. A rebate system1 or a spending initiative, is proposed. This 'output based equity' approach will address fairness and equity issues at the time of retirement - when full benefits are received.
Resumo:
In recent years, Australian cultural policy-makers have begun to pay more attention to innovation policy. Several of the Australian states specifically address issues of innovation in their formal cultural policies, and the Australia Council for the Arts has published an Innovation Strategy which purports to constitute 'a coordinated approach to supporting creativity as one of Australia's most valuable assets' (Australia Council 2006).
However, despite this prima facie policy commitment to supporting and fostering innovation in the arts and cultural industries, there remains a disconnect between cultural and innovation policies in Australia. On the one hand, cultural policies in Australia are confused and incoherent in their approach to cultural innovation, and many policy settings as they apply to cultural industries are antithetical to the aims of fostering innovation and R&D. Meanwhile, innovation policies continue to pay only marginal attention to the creative arts and cultural industries. This disconnect will be briefly examined in three fields of cultural policy: arts and cultural funding; copyright and intellectual property policy; and broadcast media policy.
It is argued that rather than promoting innovation, existing policy frameworks in all three areas, when not specifically framed around the protection of vested interests, are often contradictory and inimical to the disruptive influence of innovative artists, technologies and firms. Possible reasons for the disconnect include pragmatic matters of busy ministers and low policy priorities, and conceptual confusion over the status and value of culture.
Resumo:
Cost-effective, sustainable strategies are urgently required to curb the global obesity epidemic. To date, fiscal policies such as taxes and subsidies have been driven largely by imperatives to raise revenue or increase supply, rather than to change population behaviours. This paper reviews the economic evaluation literature around the use of fiscal policies to prevent obesity. The cost-effectiveness literature is limited, and more robust economic evaluation studies are required. However, uncertainty and gaps in the effectiveness evidence base need to be addressed first: more studies are needed that collect ‘real-world’ empirical data, and larger studies with more robust designs and longer follow-up timeframes are required. Reliability of cross-price elasticity data needs to be investigated, and greater consideration given to moderators of intervention effects and the sustainability of outcomes. Economic evaluations should adopt a societal perspective, incorporate a broader spectrum of economic costs and consider other factors likely to affect the implementation of fiscal measures. The paucity of recent cost-effectiveness studies means that definitive conclusions about the value for money of fiscal policies for obesity prevention cannot yet be drawn. However, as in other public health areas such as alcohol and tobacco, early indications are that population-level fiscal policies are likely to be potentially effective and cost-saving.
Resumo:
The importance of using research evidence in decision making at the policy level has been increasingly recognized. However, knowledge brokering to engage researchers and policymakers in government and non-government organizations is challenging. This paper describes and evaluates the knowledge exchange processes employed by the Translational Research on Obesity Prevention in Communities (TROPIC) project that was conducted from July 2009 to April 2012 in Fiji. TROPIC aimed to enhance: the evidence-informed decision making skills of policy developers; and awareness and utilization of local and other obesity-related evidence to develop policies that could potentially improve the nation’s food and physical activity environments. The specific research question was: Can a knowledge brokering approach advance evidence-informed policy development to improve eating and physical activity environments in Fiji.
Resumo:
For a developing economy with a given urban wage rate, globalization in capital markets strengthens labor unions. This result hinges on the fixed urban wage rate, which leads to a constant capital–labor ratio in the urban sector. Globalization via capital inflows not only enhances the employment effect of unionization but also reduces the rent-shifting related loss in production inefficiency to domestic capital, lending a support to labor unions for developing economies. This result is contrary to the common belief that labor unions tend to be weakened during the globalization process observed after 1980s in many developed economies.
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Objectives:
Design and Methods:
This study involved a cross-sectional survey of 304 public health practitioners and policy-makers from government, non-government, and community organizations across Victoria, Australia. Participants reported their organizations' current obesity prevention programs and policies, their own perceptions of the feasibility and effectiveness of strategies to prevent obesity and their preferred settings for obesity prevention.
Results:
Thirty-nine percent had an obesity prevention policy, and 92% were implementing obesity prevention programs. The most common programs focused on education, skill-building, and increasing access to healthy eating/physical activity opportunities. School curriculum-based initiatives, social support for physical activity, and family-based programs were considered the most effective strategies, whereas curriculum-based initiatives, active after-school programs, and providing access to and information about physical activity facilities were deemed the most feasible strategies. Schools were generally perceived as the most preferred setting for obesity prevention.
Conclusion:
Many organizations had obesity prevention programs, but far fewer had obesity prevention policies. Current strategies and those considered feasible and effective are often mismatched with the empirical literature. Systems to ensure better alignment between researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, and identifying effective methods of translating empirical evidence into practice and policy are required.
Resumo:
Private-sector organizations play a critical role in shaping the food environments of individuals and populations. However, there is currently very limited independent monitoring of private-sector actions related to food environments. This paper reviews previous efforts to monitor the private sector in this area, and outlines a proposed approach to monitor private-sector policies and practices related to food environments, and their influence on obesity and non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention. A step-wise approach to data collection is recommended, in which the first (‘minimal’) step is the collation of publicly available food and nutrition-related policies of selected private-sector organizations. The second (‘expanded’) step assesses the nutritional composition of each organization's products, their promotions to children, their labelling practices, and the accessibility, availability and affordability of their products. The third (‘optimal’) step includes data on other commercial activities that may influence food environments, such as political lobbying and corporate philanthropy. The proposed approach will be further developed and piloted in countries of varying size and income levels. There is potential for this approach to enable national and international benchmarking of private-sector policies and practices, and to inform efforts to hold the private sector to account for their role in obesity and NCD prevention.
Security in uncertain times: policies for increasing the popularity of life annuities among retirees
Resumo:
Life annuities offer retirees an assured income stream for as long as they live. This makes it surprising that they are unpopular in most markets where their purchase is not compelled by government policy. With the numbers of retirees in the population set to increase dramatically, this low take-up rate of life annuities could exacerbate financial insecurity. Consequently, it is in society’s interest to implement non-coercive policies that increase annuitization levels. Although there is research that has focused on the possible causes of low annuitization rates, much of this research falls short of suggesting comprehensive strategies for persuading retirees to annuitize their savings.
This article discusses what mix of policies would increase the attractiveness of life annuities. It does this by determining the salient characteristics of the few markets where life annuities are popular. It then suggests how the correct policy settings could make such characteristics a feature of the mainstream annuity market. It also discusses other policies, including limited tax incentives or subsidies on annuities that might play an important role. It is argued that policy innovations such as these are preferable to making the purchase of annuities compulsory. This is because the one-size-fits-all approach will not be ideal for everyone, and it interferes with freedom of choice, an important right in a capitalist society. An alternative is to make annuity purchases a default choice. But this is effectively compulsion by stealth as it relies on inertia and, therefore, carries some of the disadvantages of mandatory annuitization. The article concludes with a discussion of how the appropriate marketing and innovation of different life annuity products could supplement annuity-maximizing policies and further improve annuitization rates.
Resumo:
The Middle East has been the centerpiece of American foreign policy for decades. As President Barack Obama faces continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear debate in Iran, and the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the future of this region is once again firmly in the international spotlight. America's Challenges in the Greater Middle East charts US policy towards key Middle Eastern states and evaluates the impact of the current administration's policies. This edited volume brings together scholarly opinion from a diverse range of world-recognized experts and is the definitive text on the Obama administration's engagement with this volatile, yet politically vital, part of the world.
