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Reading is a commandment from Allah. commanded through al-Qur'an Surah al-Alaq verse 1 which was revealed through the intermediary angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Which will be preached to all the human Ummah specifically to the Ummah who always follows the teachings of Islam. Therefore, we must read the Koran, both reading directly (written) and reading with signs of Allah's power. (implied). Which has a variety of discussions ranging from reading the Koran, mentadabburi, practice and practice so as to create a generation of Qur'ani. In this paper using library research with the method of using library data collection techniques (Library Research) that uses various kinds of existing literature such as books, books of hadith, books of interpretation and the Qur'an that will help in using methods, deductive, inductive and comparative. And it was concluded that the command to read in the Koran so that it can be seen that reading is not just a job, not a mere hobby but as a very important command that will underlie all our activities in this world, let alone a prosecutor of knowledge, reading also is a foundation to go to the path that is blessed by Allah.

One of the features that has distinguished industrial relations in Australia from those of other countries in the twentieth century has been the legally binding awards of industrial tribunals. These have occupied the place of collective bargaining elsewhere and the Australian peculiarity has usually been traced back to the great strikes and the defeat of the unions in the 1890s.1 Nevertheless, the events leading up to B. R. Wise's very successful arbitration act of 1901 have received only cursory consideration. The New South Wales Trade Disputes Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1892, which followed by three months Victoria's Councils of Conciliation Act of 1891, was the second such measure to be passed by any Australasian colony and as a pioneer ing and useful experiment should not be dismissed merely (in the words of William Pember Reeves) as 'an amiable and nicely drafted measure' and 'a not inexpensive piece of waste paper'.2 One line of Labour historians has seen conciliation and arbitration as a Labour achievement. George Black wrongly included it among the planks of the Labor Electoral League platform of 1891 which Henry Parkes promised to implement and he considered J. H. Cann's amendment bill of 1893 to be a Labor party bill, although in fact eight Labor members voted against it.3 L. G. Churchward asserts that the Labor parties provided the main drive for compulsory arbitration in the 'nineties,4 but it should be pointed out that not until 1898 did Labour as a whole press for compulsory awards. The other line of Labour thinking is exemplified by Brian Fitzpatrick who saw that, 'the arbitration system was of the masters' making, not the men's', and that the acts of 1892 and 1901 'were not Labor measures, nor did they necessarily owe much to the Labor Party'. Here the word 'necessarily' converts a precise into an unclear statement, and Fitzpatrick's account shifts uneasily between a denial of Labour paternity for the acts and an admission that Labour pressed for and influenced the legislation. Fitzpatrick did not distinguish between Labour's attitude to voluntary conciliation and to compulsory arbitration and he gave an erroneous account of the act of 1892 which later historians have repeated.5 In seeking the origin of the arbitration system in Australia almost infinite regression is possible. English practice and precedent came

This paper analyses European approaches to migration. It does so with a focus on the struggles and claims advanced by migrants themselves and other subjects as an angle from which to discern the clash between a narrow, operational, understanding of what is just in the field of migration and different ways to instead understand justice as a political and dynamic principle. The paper discusses the conceptions of justice employed in the Globus project – justice as non-domination, as impartiality and as mutual recognition – and argues for an expanded conception of justice as mutual recognition as a way to bring the discussion beyond both the Westphalian and cosmopolitan perspectives. It then discusses different forms of contestation of European migration policies, by examining different ways in which they are contested both in practice and in principle by different actors, including migrants and movements of solidarity. Lastly, the paper discusses the emerging approaches to migration within the EU through the concept of logistification, arguing that this leads to a form of ‘ethical minimalism’ that limits the reach of global justice as a political concept. The paper ends by arguing for the need to develop discussions about the global leading towards wider conceptions of justice where migration is considered in all its dimensions as a powerful transformative force, and not simply as an object of governance, and migrants themselves are considered as political subjects which constantly keep the quest for justice open beyond any reductionist approach.

Educational debt is an economic stressor that is harmful to mental health and disproportionately experienced by African American and Latinx youth. In this paper, we use a daily diary design to explore the link between mental health, context specific factors like “college stress” and time use, and educational debt stress, or stress incurred from thinking about educational debt and college affordability. This paper utilizes data from a sample of predominately African American and Latinx college students who provided over 1000 unique time observations. Results show that debt-induced stress is predictive of greater self-reported hostility, guilt, sadness, fatigue, and general negative emotion. Moreover, the relationship may be partly mediated by “college stress” reflecting course loads and post-graduation job expectations. For enrolled students then, educational debt may influence mental health directly through concerns over affordability, or indirectly by shaping facets of college life. The window that our granular data provides into college experiences suggest that the consequences of student debt are manifest and immediate. Further, the documented day-to-day mental health burden for minority students may contribute to downstream processes such as matriculation.

PurposeIn this paper, we investigate the impact of remittances on control of corruption in Nigeria for a period of 1986–2016.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses ARDL modeling framework, dynamic OLS estimation, variance decomposition and impulse response analysis to examine the relationship between the two variables.FindingsThe study finds that remittances significantly improve the control of corruption in Nigeria. We further examine the robustness test of the results using dynamic OLS estimation, variance decomposition and impulse response analysis. Our results remain significant and consistent to the earlier one reported in ARDL framework which supports the extant literature.Practical implicationsOur study suggests that international remittances can be used, through the cross-border transfer of norms and practices, to significantly impact the socioeconomic progresses of a country by reducing corruption.Originality/valueThe existing studies on the relationship between corruption and remittances document conflicting results. In addition, study on corruption - remittances nexus that specifically focuses on any African country is largely absent despite the fact that most of the countries in the region are recognized as highly corrupt. This paper provides insights on how remittances can be used as part of tool kits to control corruption in African nation.

The conventional wisdom is that American universities transfer technologies more rapidly and more effectively than their European counterparts. While this appears to be true, it is important to note that there are substantial cultural, legal, and regulatory differences between the two regions, and even within Europe. We believe that European universities can enhance their effectiveness in technology transfer if this function is given more visibility and prestige, enhanced public support, and formal procedures are implemented to facilitate benchmarking. In this paper, we examine some of the differences in university technology transfer in Europe and the U.S., and discuss these new approaches, which have recently been fully supported by the European Commission.

The acquisition of positive personal characteristics that schools strive to achieve mainly happens through social interaction, which is reflected in the quality of the individual's relationship with other members of the community as well as in the individual’s behaviour towards them. Features of personality are closely related to the individual’s interpersonal and intrapersonal competences. Intrapersonal competences of the personality are those complex activities of the individual which focus on oneself and one’s own development. This is for example self-knowledge and self-understanding, forming the basis of self-evaluation which is represented in the assessment of one’s own abilities, beliefs, characteristics, motives and behaviour. Self-motivation, which means the conscious mobilization of one’s own abilities and directing them to certain specific goals, makes the individual capable of self-management which determines the strategy of activities to hit the chosen target. In this paper, I introduce what is actually evaluated in education in terms of student performance or if their learning activities depend not only on the teacher’s personal conception of the teaching itself, but also on some general concepts of education. The concept of evaluation gives a comprehensive view on the issue from the aspects of defining the process and applying the methods, means and results of evaluation. The expressive aspects of verbal, non-verbal and meta-communicative contents expressing the dyadic relationships of individual – individual, individual – group and individual – society are of concern to the personality dimension of educational evaluation. The main function of verbal evaluation is to regulate the behaviour of students through positive social reinforcement, rewards, motivation, or on the contrary, by penalties and disincentives. This context also allows the examination of specific features, respectively dilemmas of educational evaluation caused by subjectivity or just the opposite, the efforts of objectivity, the teacher’s preconceptions, the halo effect, the teacher’s personality, etc.

Until very recently, the major focus of research in the field of consumer behavior has been on the selection of products, brands and decision choices primarily in the sphere of marketing. The purpose of this paper was to modify a model developed to measure market share to account for the variables that enter into the selection of a political candidate and predict voting behavior.

Purpose Many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria have initiated programmes targeted at addressing food insecurity, but without any major significant breakthrough. This necessitates the call for inclusion of social network institutional framework into the food and nutrition security policy of many developing countries. This is touted as an important social safety net needed for farming households’ economic advancement and welfare. Consequent on this, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of social networks in building resilience against food insecurity among farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach Data collected from a sample of 297 smallholder farmers during 2015/2016 agricultural production season were analysed using descriptive statistics to describe farmers’ notable characteristics. However, Foster–Greer–Thorbecke indices vis-à-vis food consumption expenditure-metrics technique was used to evaluate the food security profile of the respondents. Similarly, ordinary least square and two-stage least square (2SLS) models were applied to investigate the effects and “reverse causality” in the social networks food security model. Findings The study findings indicated that about 48.15 per cent of the smallholder farmers are food insecure. Similarly, the study revealed that age (ppppppp Social implications There is an urgent need for pragmatic policies that support systematic and organized social groups and networks formation in the rural/agrarian areas across Nigeria. Originality/value A widely accepted view of economic theory posits that traditional capitals (physical, economic/financial and human) drive households’ welfare including food security status. However, this study has established the relevance of social networks as an important component of human well-being. Apparently, this study also established the exogeneity of social networks in the framework of households’ food security status.

To find a partner company is a critical element of benchmarking, partly because it requires the establishment of a win-win situation, partly because of the magnitude of resources and effort needed. In this paper we propose to use the results of an international survey as a basis for reference points and to use the questionnaire as an instrument for assessing the company’s goals, performance and practice. A benchmarking system is proposed which indicate relevant factors to benchmark. The way in which reference points are established is demonstrated by means of examples.

This paper examines the relation between debt structure and investment, by exploiting differences in secured and unsecured debt holdings. In order to address endogeneity concerns, I exploit two sources of exogenous variation for identification. From the firms' side, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 represents a negative shock to firms' creditworthiness. From the credit market's perspective, the asset-backed commercial paper market collapse of 2007 caused a temporary shortage of unsecured commercial paper. Each of these shocks to debt structure is analyzed combining a difference-in-differences approach with an instrumental variable estimation (Waldinger (2010)), which allows studying i) substitution patterns among debt types and ii) the impact on investment. Results show that greater access to unsecured debt leads to larger investment. When firms face more restricted access to the unsecured debt market, they substitute toward secured debt, and reduce investment. The reason behind this result is that unsecured debt is more cost-effective in terms of spreads and covenants. These findings suggest that collateral is not key to finance investment, as instead has often been claimed in the literature. Creditworthiness rather than collateral is key to access unsecured debt. Additionally, I shed light on how access to the unsecured debt market relates to the balance sheet and credit channels of monetary policy.

Input is considered one of the most important factors in the acquisition of lexical and grammatical skills. Input has been found to interact with other factors, such as learner cognitive skills and the circumstances where language is heard. Language learning itself has sometimes been found to enhance cognitive skills. Indeed, intensive contact with another language has been found to sometimes boost cognitive skills, even in intensive instructed settings, such as immersion programs (bilingual advantage hypothesis). In this paper, we report a cross-sectional study to assess grammar learning of 79 fourth grade German students learning L2 English in two immersion schools. Verbal teacher input was assessed using the Teacher Input Observation Scheme (TIOS, Items 14–25), and the learners’ L2 grammar comprehension was tested with the ELIAS Grammar Test II. Cognitive skills, including phonological awareness, working memory, and non-verbal intelligence, were determined using standardized assessment procedures. The results show that verbal input quantity and quality correlated significantly with the learners’ L2 grammar comprehension. None of the cognitive skills moderated the effect of input on grammar comprehension but all predicted it independently. The combination of L2 input and phonological awareness was found to be the most robust predictor of L2 grammar comprehension.

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper presents a experience of internship assessment in two bachelor’s degrees in Business administration, Industrial Engineering and Computer Engineering in Spain. In both studies internship are compulsory and although those studies have in essence many differences, in fact they have many common elements because both are orientated to professionalizing students. These characteristics encourage the authors, who are involved in internship as academic tutors, to propose an objective assessment model that can be used by different higher education degrees as evaluation model for internship. Therefore, this work defines a comprehensive evaluation process based on competencies for external academic internships at higher education. Integral in the sense of the participation of the academic and company tutors; and working in a double field: the academic and the professional. The evaluation model is based on the design of an evaluation rubric; from which emerges a set of assessment and qualification documents to be used as a reference/guide to shows the level of competencies mastery by each student and how they will be measured. The final of the assessment process is an individualized Final report that summarizes student’s learning process and his/her final quantitative rating; This report also includes the comments of the tutors about the skills worked, the progress in every competency and the different levels acquired by the student.

The aim of this paper is to present the category of golf in a new Historical Thesaurus of Scots (HTS). A new project to create a Pilot Historical Thesaurus of Scots (PHiTS) was based at the University of Glasgow. The Historical Thesaurus of Scots is a new resource of Scots containing vocabulary from the twelfth century to the present day, which is organised according to the relationship of synonymy and by semantic category. The thesaurus is based on the semantic information found in an existing digital resource, the Dictionary of the Scots Language, and is entirely digital. The HTS is modelled on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), the first historical thesaurus for any language, which was compiled at the University of Glasgow and published in 2009. In the pilot phase of the project, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and which lasted until September 2015, we explored domains which are lexically abundant in Scots. One such domain was...

In analysing big data for finite population inference, it is critical to adjust for the selection bias in the big data. In this paper, we propose two methods of reducing the selection bias associated with the big data sample. The first method uses a version of inverse sampling by incorporating auxiliary information from external sources, and the second one borrows the idea of data integration by combining the big data sample with an independent probability sample. Two simulation studies show that the proposed methods are unbiased and have better coverage rates than their alternatives. In addition, the proposed methods are easy to implement in practice.

mental theories of Jean Piaget, with experimental studies of concept formation in children, with the child's acquisition of a first language, and with the child's acquisition of mathematical concepts. The reports of these conferences either have appeared (Kessen and Kuhlman 1962, Wright and Kagan 1963) or will appear as Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. The earlier conferences have been devoted to one sort of comparative study of cognition, and this conference has been devoted to another sort. Both trans-cultural studies and trans-age-group studies are, on one level, extremely easy to conceive. When a graduate student in psychology is asked at his doctoral orals: "What research would you like to do next?" the routine answer is: "I think it [the procedure of the dissertation] should be tried with children" or "cross-culturally." Or it might be tried with schizophrenics or with working-class respondents or with Planaria. The matrix of comparative studies that is created by arraying the methods of behavior science against the respondent populations of behavior science is a large one; there are empty cells for all of us. There are so many empty cells, in fact, that an investigator must wish for some reason to prefer one over another. A good many comparative studies, developmental as well as cross-cultural, are guided by the kind of reasoning that is designated "Type I" in Strodtbeck's paper in this volume. In the Type I transcultural study the investigator thinks of the culture as a kind of laboratory treatment providing him with a group for the testing of a general proposition from behavior science. In the Type I developmental study, children of a certain age are useful for research because they have not yet had the conventional treatment of being taught explicit grammar, or the rules of visual perspective, or ethnic stereotypes. Sometimes the simple freedom from conventional training qualifies a group of

The paper focuses on how localized dynamic external economies of scale may cause uneven technological development internationally, and encourage regional agglomeration of industries. Location-specific technological progress depends on the absolute number of local innovating firms, and the relative number of innovating firms; i.e., the share of economic activity in a region that takes place within the innovating sector. The creation of industrial clusters contributes to explaining regional specialization, factor prices and welfare, and it appears that the critical size of a region regarding its ability to sustain an industrial cluster depends on whether factors of production are internationally mobile.

Although the legal regulation of this contract as a special named modality of the basic type of contract of sale was missing in our positive legislation, its significance for today’s modern legal transactions is undoubted. Sales contracts with the right of redemption are still concluded today and are an integral part of the living organisms of our contractual contract law. This was also noticed by the Commission for the Drafting of the Civil Code of the Republic of Serbia, which envisaged the legal regulation of this important legal work in the Pre-Draft of the new Civil Code. In this way, the intention of the Commission to finally fill the legal gap that still exists in the Serbian contract law regarding the legal regulation of this legal transaction as a special named contract was expressed. Sales contracts with the right of redemption are valid legal transactions that still produce legal effects, under the condition that they are concluded in accordance with the general principles of our contract law, within the limits prescribed by positive laws and regulations and are not contrary to public order and good customs. In this paper, the author looks at the origin and historical development of this modality of the contract of sale, the concept, features and subject of the contract, including the rights and obligations of the parties, presented significant understandings of legal science on the legal nature and duration of contracts of sale and pointed out the need for its legal regulation as a named contract.

PurposeTo contrast and test two conceptualisations of entrepreneurship: “opportunity discovery” and “opportunity development”.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the development of a conceptual framework for the study, an investigation was conducted through semi‐structured interviews with the founders and managing directors of 20 start‐up ventures in the Swedish mobile internet industry.FindingsThe study illustrates how entrepreneurial learning can be understood from the perspective of “opportunity development”. This conceptualisation of opportunity incorporates market interaction and real‐life processes influenced by prior knowledge, resources, and the industrial context. It is especially appropriate in situations characterised by uncertainty. The alternative conceptualisation of opportunity (in terms of “opportunity discovery”) is more suitable in situations of low risk when initial opportunity perceptions are comprehensive, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on their products and services, rather than on potential customers and/or appropriation in the market.Research limitations/implicationsThe study concerns one industry undergoing substantial changes during a specific period, which limits the generalisability of the findings.Practical implicationsEntrepreneurs might do well to launch ventures based on comprehensive opportunity perceptions.Originality/valueThe paper takes a novel approach to the discussion of opportunity in entrepreneurship.

Fabrication spaces (fab-spaces), such as TechShops or Fab Labs, provide access to sophisticated digital manufacturing technologies to individuals. They could be a new institutional context which influences entrepreneurial behaviour. To understand how this might happen, we used a grounded approach to examine the experience of eight individuals who have benefitted from fab-spaces to push forward their entrepreneurial ventures. This examination led to the development of new hypotheses regarding the potential role of fab-spaces in the entrepreneurial journey. In particular, it has emerged that fab-spaces might affect the entry phase of a new venture by lowering the 'perception of performance' threshold. Fab-spaces also affect post-entry barriers, as they provide an opportunity to entrepreneurs for fast learning, and consequently, to establish effective routines. However, this paper also shows how these positive effects might be moderated by fab-spaces' institutional setup, chiefly their location and cultural characteristics.

Applying a cross-country growth regression approach, the paper by Ross Levine and Maria Carkovic attempts to quantify the growth effects that might flow from providing a more stable nominal environment low and steady inflation and stable exchange rates. Thus, the paper focuses on one potential benefit of dollarization and sets aside a vast range of costs and benefits that would have to be weighed in making the policy decision. This topic is surely among the most important regarding dollarization: growth benefits that flow from dollarization could easily dwarf benefits or costs due, for example, to reduced countercyclical policy. The paper is another in a long line of outstanding contributions to cross-country growth analysis by Ross Levine with many coauthors.l These papers have documented the potential problems with cross-country growth regressions, have steadily improved the best practice in the area, and have documented that various aspects of financial development may be central to growth. This line of research has been very productive and very persuasive: financial development seems to be an important contributor to growth. My discussion will focus on three of the most important conclusions of the current paper

Related studies on the environmental effects of poor brewery effluent management at the 9 th Mile Corner industrial area have indicated that the Nigeria Bottling Company (NBC Plc) is not effectively monitoring liquid wastes from its production operations. There is need to investigate and explore these issues and take effective remedial action before the negative impact of its activities become widespread and elicit adverse reactions from the community. It is the intention of this paper to explore related issues and articulate a framework for effective monitoring of industrial effluents and management of Brewery wastes at the 9 th Mile Corner using the Nigeria Bottling Company plant as case study. The research design combined desktop and social survey. Past studies on the environmental effects of the Nigerian Breweries activities were reviewed and analyzed. The company premises and surroundings were surveyed for evidence of industrial effluents flowing from the plant into residential areas. It was found that industrial effluents treatment facilities of the company are old and dilapidating causing effluents to escape outside the plant waste management system. Against this background the paper outlines the type of monitoring and auditing, as well as, relevant organization/agencies that should participate in the implementation of the proposed revised environmental management plan(s) for the factory. Adoption of this strategy for the management of environmental effects of the company effluent would undoubtedly enthrone sound best practices in the management of brewery plants operations in 9 th Mile Corner and other industrial districts in Nigeria.

This paper seeks to examine some of the perceptions and attitudes developed by Muslims in relation to the social conflict of Maluku. This paper argues that there were no single views among Muslims with regard to the conflict. Some Muslim hard-liners in general have demonstrated hostile perceptions and confrontational attitudes toward their perceived enemy. They constructed the conflict as a “religious war,” and demanded that the Indonesian Council of Religious Scholars (MUI) issue a fatwa that would allow Muslims outside Maluku to fight against the enemy in Maluku. The Muslim moderates, on the other hand, tended to avoid religious vocabularies, while attempting to work out peaceful solutions. The semi-official MUI, Nahdlatul Ulama, and Muhammadiyyah perceived the conflict as not religiously driven; they viewed the conflict in a more sophisticated way. They saw no need to wage a religious war and no need to issue a fatwa for a national jihad.

We present design considerations for an automated meeting scheduling agent that processes meeting requests on behalf of its associated user. In our formulation of the meeting scheduling problem, distributed meeting scheduling agents, one per user, intelligently exchange information with each other to schedule meetings without compromising user-specified constraints. In this paper, we first enumerate various strategies we have investigated to focus distributed negotiation between scheduling agents. Next, we demonstrate the necessity for such a scheduler to be adaptive in its choice of options for the various strategy dimensions, so that it can perform effectively over time. In order to build an adaptive scheduler that can effectively choose from available strategy options, we develop quantitative performance estimates of these options using detailed probabilistic analysis. Results from these analyses are used to provide guidelines to choose the most appropriate strategy combination given current environmental conditions and local problem-solving states. >

This paper investigates the geographic concentration of water pollution. Chinese firm-level data shows that water pollution emissions are unevenly distributed across regions. Using China’s accession to the World Trade Organization as the exogenous shock, we identify a negative causal effect of export liberalization on the agglomeration of water pollution across regions in China. It suggests that more water pollution was discharged in those previously low-pollution regions after the export liberalization.

It is a widely shared view that, as societies become more impersonal, economies more complicated, and knowledge more specialized, one of the relationships most likely to be reappraised in a more calculating way is the relationship between charitable givers and receivers.1 Sometimes the theme is evidenced by charting changes in state policy. In the English case, however, the theme is as likely to involve an examination of volunteer action for the relief of distress as of state policy. And once volunteer action is brought into the picture there arises the further question: To what extent is it plausible to identify the rise of the voluntary association for the relief of distress as a modernizing agency in the transition from an age of charitable pity for ‘Christ’s poor’ to an age of philanthropic concern for the social rehabilitation of marginalized subjects/citizens of the state? To what extent voluntary societies set out to play this role — to what extent their organizers acted as managers of charitable impulse, and with what degree of success — it is the task of this paper to explore.

The functional model is one of the key development foundations to understand, anticipate and reflect products and technical systems, since the interplay of functions directly reflect the intended and their expected behaviors. Furthermore, with the help of functions, it is possible to implicitly describe a significant portion of the characteristics of the product under development. The development of a functional structure requires significant knowledge and experience; often engineers have a difficult task to describe the functionality of a product in a solution neutral form. During such development phases, questions arise about the possibility of exchanging functions between products, which is a nontrivial task. To explore the nature of exchanging functions, the authors conducted research about functional flows of two complex mechatronic products. Functional flows have shown the ability to establish relationships between functions of two products. The analysis reveals aspects of functional modeling in terms of the hierarchy of functions and their interrelationships. The paper considers an approach to build a common functional model, determining the structure of functional decomposition and determining the functional flow of a product. A clear decomposition and structure of product functions show the possibility of establishing links between products, in order to exchange functions. The constructed concept of the common functional model demonstrates its theoretical and practical use as a framework for building the individual functionality of a new product. This paper concludes with an outlook to future steps and directions to explore the potential for function exchanging.

In this paper, we explore the links between pension reform, early retirement, and the use of unemployment as an alternative pathway to retirement. We use a dynamic rational expectations model to analyze the search and retirement behaviour of employed and unemployed workers aged 50 or over. The model is calibrated to reproduce the main reemployment and retirement patterns observed between 2002 and 2008 in Spain. It is subsequently used to analyze the effects of the 2011 pension reform in Spain, characterized by 2-year delays in both the early and the normal retirement ages. We find that this reform generates large increases in labour supply and sizable cuts in pension costs, but these are achieved at the expense of very large welfare losses, especially among unemployed workers. As an alternative, we propose leaving the early retirement age unchanged, but penalizing the minimum pension (reducing its generosity in parallel to the cuts imposed on individual pension benefits, and making it more actuarially fair with age). This alternative reform strikes a better balance between individual welfare and labour supply stimulus.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of natural resources on under-five mortality in a sample of 50 African countries over the period 1996 to 2018. We also examine the extent to which governance shapes the relationship between natural resources and under-five mortality. Our results show that natural resources have increased under-five mortality. Resource rents also have detrimental effects on child mortality by age, gender, and the three major causes of infant mortality from infectious diseases. However, an extended analysis of different types of natural resources suggests that point resources (such as oil, natural gas and mineral rents) increase under-five mortality, in contrast to the diffuse resources (such as forest rent). We also find that governance mitigates the positive effect of natural resources on child mortality. Corresponding governance policy thresholds that should be attained in order to reverse the positive effects of natural resources on child mortality are provided. We thus suggest an increase in the funds allocated to the health sector from resource rents and encourage efforts to improve governance standards in sampled countries.

This paper examines Julian of Norwich’s representation of the Passion of Christ in herRevelation of Love, proposing that Julian reads the body of Christ through a medical hermeneutic which echoes vernacular texts of the spiritual ‘remedy’ genre. The essay’s overarching argument is that Julian’s engagement with humoral theory positions her as a participant in an emerging collective imaginary of vernacular medicine, related to the translation and transmission of medical texts in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Comparing the Latin and Middle English versions of William Flete’sRemedies Against Temptationsand related works, I examine how this spiritual-medical discourse is expressed in vernacular texts contemporary to Julian’s life. I then consider Julian’s own sophisticated invocation of medical theory and practice in her description of the Passion, where she deploys diagnostic markers to depict an ‘ex-sanguination’ of Christ’s perfect disposition. These markers serve to reify the traditional figure of the ‘Man of Sorrows’ with a portrayal of Christ’s body as melancholic, a humoral affliction which reiterates both his suffering and his ‘love-longing’ for humanity. Finally, I show how this medical account functions in Julian’s optimistic theology, offering a reminder of the eternal presence of God’s love even in times of pain and disease.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first to look at all the classifications of capacity, second to define and analyze subjectively a particular type of capacity to be called "psychometric capacity" and third, to quantify this new concept of capacity in order that it can be measured and analyzed objectively. Capacity is classified in a matrix form, first by its micro and macro aspects and then by type; statutory, optimum and psychometric. Psychometric capacity is that amount of risk to be measured in terms of premium dollars written which an underwriter is willing to take in exchange for the return which he expects to earn from the premium. To measure psychometric capacity, an equation, the hyperbolic tangent function, is used. This function has characteristics which are similar to the utility curve of an individual who is averse to risk. The inputs for this function are obtained from three simple questions rather than a series of complicated questions as in the case of a utility index. The primary use of psychometric capacity is to devise a supply curve for an insurance company so that its operation can be simulated for planning and decision making purposes. In recent years many people associated with the insurance industry have become increasingly concerned with the "capacity problem." Now that profits for the industry are up, this problem has been downgraded in importance. However, several important aspects of this situation remain unsolved. This includes the availability of convenient workable definitions and standard measures for all types of capacity. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first to look at all the classifications of capacity, second to define and analyze subjectively a particular type of capacity to be called "psychometric capacity" and third, to quantify this new concept of capacity in order that it can be measured and analyzed objectively. In order to accomplish the first objective, it is convenient to express capacity in a matrix form. This allows the relationship between various classifications of capacity to come into a clear perspective. Robert A. Hershbarger, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Finance in the University of Missouri-Columbia. From 1959-1966 he was Assistant Supervisor of Insurance at the University of Illinois and from 1966-1969 was Coordinator of Insurance at Northern Illinois University. Before going to his present position, Dr. Hershbarger was Assistant Professor of Finance and Insurance in the University of Rhode Island. This paper was presented at the 1973 Annual Meeting of ARIA. (51 ) This content downloaded from 157.55.39.136 on Thu, 19 May 2016 04:27:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 52 The Journal of Risk and Insurance To facilitate this manner of presentation, capacity is first subdivided between its micro and macro aspects. Then the micro subdivision is further broken down into the capacity available for (1) single exposure unit, (2) the line of insurance and (3) the insurer. The macro side is divided between the industry's capacity and alien reinsurance. The types of capacity considered are psychometric, optimum and statutory. These are described in detail in the following sections. Matrix The interrelationships between all the components of capacity become clearer when put in matrix form.' The column headings outline underwriting capacity from the systems point of view, building from the basic exposure unit up to and including alien reinsurance. Figure 1 Capacity Matrix for the Insurance Industry

Over the last few years there has been a renewed interest in questions of citizenship and in particular its relation to young people. This has been allied to an educational discourse where the emphasis has been upon questions concerned with ‘outcome’ rather than with ‘process’– with the curriculum and methods of teaching rather than questions of understanding and learning. This paper seeks to describe and illuminate the linkages within and between these related discourses. It advocates an inclusive and relational view of citizenship-as-practice within a distinctive socio-economic and political, and cultural milieu. Drawing upon some empirical insights from our research we conclude that an appropriate educational programme would respect the claim to citizenship status of everyone in society, including children and young people. It would work together with young people rather than on young people, and recognise that the actual practices of citizenship, and the ways in which these practices transf...

Many immigrants face obstacles as they navigate through the lengthy and stressful immigration process and its procedures. This project is based on an investigation of an outline discussion forum through which successful immigrants and prospective immigrants exchange information regarding their immigration proceedings. The target groups that were chosen for my inquiry are prospective immigrants from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data this paper generates valuable knowledge about the first-hand experiences of individuals applying to come to Canada through Quebec's Skilled Workers immigration program. The findings show that although there is plenty of official information offered to prospective immigrants, they still encounter difficulties as they navigate through the immigration process.

This paper presents an experimental investigation of comparisons in attitudes towards risk between risk managers and non-risk managers. The two groups of managers responded to a number of hypothetical business decisions and their risk-taking attitude in each decision was measured by expressing the degree to which their actual choice differed from the expected monetary value as a fraction of the absolute value of the expected monetary value. Fifty per cent of the decisions involved a prospect of profit or break even, while the remainder held out only the prospect of a loss or no loss. A significant difference was detected in the attitudes of managers in each group. There was a great similarity in attitude over all subjects in those decisions involving profit but in potential loss-producing problems the risk managers were considerably more risk averse. Rather than resulting in a contempt for loss the risk managers' familiarity with loss-producing events would seem to have led them to a far higher degree of caution. The adaptability of non-risk managers to the loss situation together with the methods of management education are both called into question by these findings.

Environmental awareness consists in the way human beings understand the environment. We observe that relation between humans and the natural environment is a concern related to the currently environmental and social. Thus, this paper aims to identify what we call as environmental perception in students from a 6th grade elementary state school in Sorriso, Mato Grosso. For this case study, we used a semi structured questionnaire with open and closed questions for a group of 63 students. After the answer’s analysis phase, for some previously selected questions, were created categories and tabulated, for other questions, data’s were analyzed and demonstrated in charts. As results, as quoted by several authors, we observed that the environmental and sight perception of the students are coherent for schoolchildren in this age, however, the authors reinforce that the development of projects concerning environmental education are still needed., A percepção ambiental consiste na forma como o ser humano compreende o meio ambiente. Observando a relação do homem com o ambiente natural é uma preocupação pertinente ao quadro ambiental e social, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo identificar aquilo que chamamos de percepção ambiental de alunos de 6° ano do ensino fundamental de uma escola estadual de Sorriso, Mato Grosso. Para este estudo de caso, foi utilizado um questionário semiestruturado com perguntas fechadas e abertas, para um grupo de 63 estudantes. Após a análise do conteúdo das respostas, para algumas questões previamente selecionadas, foram criadas categorias e tabeladas, para outras, os dados foram analisados e demonstrados em tabelas. Foi possível observar que a percepção ambiental dos alunos e a visão de meio ambiente é coerente com o citado por diversos autores para estudantes dessa idade, no entanto, reforçam que ainda há uma necessidade de desenvolvimento de projetos voltados à educação ambiental.

This paper discusses an application of ecosystem mapping technology to visualize the innovation ecosystem in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. Ideally, actors in the MSME sector should function as a system, exchanging knowledge, information and other resources, to uplift innovation and create economic value to a country or a region. Visualizing this system enables to understand the deficiencies in the exchange of resources among actors; the deficiencies, which makes innovation and growth challenging to MSMEs. Based on this idea, the study presented in this paper focuses on the handicrafts sector in Sri Lanka and attempt to map its ecosystem based on the manually collected publicly available data on social media. The subsequent analysis of the support ecosystem map reveals a major deficit in the exchange of information technology resources, which hinders the digital innovation and transformation of the MSMEs in the handicrafts sector. The paper further discusses the implications and future research directions.

This paper presents a new discrete time approach to pricing contingent claims on a risky asset and stochastic interest rates. The term structure of interest rates is modeled so that arbitrage-free bond prices depend on an observable initial forward rate curve rather than an exogenously specified market price of risk. A restricted binomial process is employed to model both interest rates and an asset price. As a result, a complete market valuation formula obtains. By choosing the parameters of the discrete joint distribution such that, in the limit, the discrete model converges to the continuous one, a model is obtained that requires the estimation of only three parameters. The approach is parsimonious with respect to alternative models in the literature and can be used to price contingent claims on any two state variables. The procedure is used to numerically analyze the effects of the volatility of interest rates on the determination of mortgage contract rates.

NATHAN ALLEN WAS BORN IN 1813 in Princeton, Mass, and grew up working on his family’s farm. When the family couldn’t afford to send him to college, a friend helped pay his tuition at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1836 and then spent some time teaching. He later entered the medical department of Pennsylvania College, earning his MD in 1841. While in medical school, Allen was appointed editor of the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, to which he contributed many editorials, letters, and book reviews. He then settled in Lowell, Mass, and practiced medicine there for the rest of his life.1 Figure 1 Allen was an advocate of public health and preventive medicine, believing that it was far preferable to prevent disease than to cure it. He argued for a “great general law of propagation applicable to all organic life” whereby the overactivity of any one organ tended to diminish the activity of other organs and lead to diminished fertility.2 He tried to demonstrate that the low birth rate of native New Englanders (compared with that of immigrants) was due to impaired physical condition. In 1850, Allen published An Essay on the Opium Trade, an attack on the British for promoting the cultivation of opium in India and forcing it on the Chinese people.3 He subsequently wrote numerous papers on population and vital statistics, physical and mental culture, insanity and heredity, state medicine and public health, obstetrics and maternity, and the education of women. Some 40 of his articles were later collected and republished in Physical Development, or the Laws Governing the Human System.4 Allen was a leading voice in the debate over the social and philosophical questions of his day. He was known as a friend to the poor and destitute, and a reformer of institutions for their care, urging the more humane treatment of prisoners and the insane. He earned the wrath of many wealthy and influential citizens by becoming a strong public advocate of the “ten hour law” to limit the maximum hours of daily work. Allen was appointed to the Massachusetts State Board of Charities and the Lowell Board of Health and gave many years of free service to the city dispensary. In 1872, he was named a delegate to an international congress in London on prison reform. Appointed commissioner of lunacy for Massachusetts, he was responsible for an 1875 report advocating reform of that state’s mental asylums. In 1857, Allen was chosen by the Massachusetts legislature to be a trustee of Amherst College, a post he held until his death in 1889. In that capacity, he was instrumental in establishing the Department of Physical Culture and the ceaseless promotion of health and physical education.

This paper investigates the relationship between advertising and consumption with panel data at the industry level for some European countries. At the macroeconomic level, consumption can increase only if saving decreases. However, the competition effect of advertising is better captured at the industry level, which allows for interaction between firms. We explore possible relationships with a unique dataset of consumption and advertising spending in 27 sectors across 9 years for 5 European Union countries. Our results show that consumption has a significant in uence on advertising, but the reverse does not apply. Our findings also suggest that business stealing is the dominant effect of advertising relative to consumption increasing.

In 2020, Berlin introduced a rigorous rent-control policy responding to soaring prices by capping rents: the Mietendeckel (rent freeze). The German Constitutional Court revoked the policy only one year later. Although successful in lowering rents during its duration, the consequences for Berlin’s rental market and close-by markets are per se not clear. This article evaluates the short-term causal supply-side effects in terms of prices, quantities, and landlords’ strategic behavior. We develop a theoretical framework capturing the key features of first-generation rent control policies and Berlin-specific aspects. Using a rich pool of detailed rent advertisements, predictions are tested, and further empirical causal inference techniques are applied for comparing price trajectories of dwellings inside and outside the policy’s scope. Mechanically, advertised rents drop significantly upon the policy’s enactment. A substantial rent gap along Berlin’s administrative border emerges, and rapidly growing rents in Berlin’s (unregulated) adjacent municipalities are observed. Landlords started adopting a hedging strategy insuring themselves against the risk of contractually long-term fixed low rents following a potentially unconstitutional law. Whereas this hedge was beneficial for landlords, the risk was completely borne by tenants. Moreover, the number of available properties for rent dropped significantly, a share of which appears to be permanently lost for the rental sector. This hampers a successful housing search for first-time renters and people moving within the city. Overall, negative consequences for renters appear to outweigh positive ones. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: This research benefits from funding by the FNR Luxembourg National Research Fund [CORE Grant 3886] (ASSESS) and the OeNB Anniversary Fund [Grant 18767] (LocHouse). M. Fongoni further thanks the Department of Economics at the University of Strathclyde for support and acknowledges funding from the French government under the “France 2030” investment plan managed by the French National Research Agency [Reference ANR-17-EURE-0020] and from the Excellence Initiative of Aix-Marseille University - A*MIDEX. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4775 .

Immigration has proven to be a major force driving entrepreneurial dynamics. In this paper I investigate how the geographical distribution of immigrants within a given country, and in particular the presence of “enclaves,” affects the relationship between immigration and entrepreneurship. I examine the impact of Polish immigration to Great Britain following the unprecedented migration wave caused by the European Union enlargement in 2004. I address omitted variable concerns by using information on the location of historical Polish military settlements and the occupational composition and growth of Polish immigration in Ireland to construct instruments for enclaves and location choices of immigrants. The econometric results indicate, on the one hand, that immigration does increase immigrant entrepreneurship, but not in existing immigrant enclaves. On the other hand, immigrant entrepreneurs outside enclaves tend to achieve worse growth outcomes than those in enclaves. Further analyses provide an explanation to these findings due to blocked labor markets and to the higher prevalence of “necessity entrepreneurship” outside of enclaves. These results offer new insights to understand the influence of geography on entrepreneurship in the presence of immigration. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4776 .

Several explanations are proposed for the observed domination of wages in the wage-fringe benefit mix. Domination occurs if fringe benefits are taxed at a higher level or marginal rate, or if trading fringe benefits incurs transaction costs. A central result shows wage domination, even in the absence of these effects, due to intertemporal effects of durable fringe benefits, which can be consumed in periods of disagreement. This enables workers to extract a higher bargaining surplus, and leads the firm to resist fringe benefit payments. Finally, the paper gives a novel reason for tenure effects in both wages and fringe benefits.

The world catch of marine fish has doubled in 10 years and is still rising. The need for the fleets to go farther afield, and the desire for a better balance of costs and earnings together with improved quality of product, have given rise to a number of innovations, such as freezing at sea, stern trawling and sophisticated machinery systems based on the internal-combustion engine. The author reviews these developments and their potential effect on the economics of the industry. Research and development on trawl gear and freezing plant, with which the author has been associated, are described briefly. New methods are forcing the industry to approach design of ships more rationally; recent studies on a trawl winch are cited as an example. In the paper attention is drawn to lack of knowledge in several fields, e.g. flow of boiling refrigerants and heat transfer thereto, the movement of vessels in a seaway, etc. The engineering effort in fisheries development in the United Kingdom is described briefly. Much of the applied research and development requires the co-operation of engineers and biological scientists; the exchange of knowledge and ideas is by no means all in one direction.

Government Matters: Welfare Reform in Wisconsin. By Lawrence M. Mead. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 368p. $35.00 cloth, $22.95 paper. One of the most challenging aspects of welfare reform was that it made policy evaluation more difficult, especially after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 allowed states to shift from operating federal public assistance programs (or variants under waiver authority) to implementing programs of their own design. Analysts accustomed to studying a relatively stable set of nationally comparable social programs had to begin asking new, and sometimes startlingly basic, questions about the kinds of benefits that state and local governments were providing, to whom they were providing them, and on what basis. As a result, research on U.S. poverty and welfare reliance suffered a major setback at precisely the time when the need to track policy outcomes became especially critical.

What a genius, building a home for more than 10 centuries in the Sahara desert with all the necessary amenities to withstand a hyper-arid climate like that of Timimoun and Tiout. During our work missions during the period: 2000-2019 in the south-west of the Sahara, we were interested in the feeding of Timimoun ksours by the foggaras. This study shows that feeding ksar water remains an unresolved problem for the ksouriens of the Sahara. Two success stories in this area of water have been cited in this paper. These are the ksours of Timimoun which are fed by the foggaras. The ksar of Tiout was supplied with water by an ancestral dam. These are the two cases of the Sahara that have benefited from water with zero energy. These two examples demonstrate the ingenuity of the ksours population. If after ten centuries, the oasis have managed to master the architecture of the ksours, against the supply of ksar in water has shortcomings.

Today is the era of intelligence in machines. Through Artificial Intelligence, machines have started to mimic various human traits today. One instance of this is the artificial intelligence conversational entities, also called chat bots, which are computer programs capable to carry out near-natural conversation with people. Chatbots are important because they are one of the most prolific examples of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). These programs are mainly serving as personal assistants these days. We programmed two working chat bots using two different programming languages, C++ and AIML, to study their construction and design practices thoroughly and to devise the further possible improvements in such kind of programs. The paper focuses a discussion about Artificial Intelligence via chat bots, their framework design, capabilities, utilization and future scope.

Alexander Gebharter (2017) has proposed to use one of the best known Bayesian network (BN) causal discovery algorithms, PC, to identify the constitutive dependencies underwriting mechanistic explanations. His proposal assumes that mechanistic constitution behaves like deterministic direct causation, such that PC is directly applicable to mixed variable sets featuring both causal and constitutive dependencies. Gebharter claims that such mixed sets, under certain restrictions, comply with PC’s background assumptions. The aim of this paper is to show that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe problems, ultimately rooted in the widespread non-compliance of mechanistic systems with PC’s assumptions. This casts severe doubts on the attempt to implicitly define constitution as a form of deterministic direct causation complying with PC’s assumptions.

This paper reviews the literature on the psychological effects of change and discusses the impact of an overarching organizational change on the staff nurses of a large oncology unit in the Midwest. Their reactions are compared with a grief-change framework synthesized from the literature. This framework was useful in explaining staff nurse behaviors and attitudes, and offered interventions specific to each stage of the change process useful to the CNS. Dissemination of this information is discussed, as well as implications for advanced nursing practice.

The paper considers the use of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), and their construction from observational data with PC-algorithm TETRAD II, in providing over-identifying restrictions on the innovations from a vector autoregression. Results from Sims’ 1986 model of the US economy are replicated and compared using these data-driven techniques. The directed graph results show Sims’ six-variable VAR is not rich enough to provide an unambiguous ordering at usual levels of statistical significance. A significance level in the neighborhood of 30 % is required to find a clear structural ordering. Although the DAG results are in agreement with Sims’ theory-based model for unemployment, dif ferences are noted for the other five variables: income, money supply, price level, interest rates, and investment. Overall the DAG results are broadly consistent with a monetarist view with adaptive expectations and no hyperinflation.