The Turnbull Gamble

The Turnbull Gamble. By Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2016), pp.vii + 200. AU$29.99 (pb).     

Transferring MSW Education to Practice: A Qualitative Study With Public Child Welfare Employees

This study used a qualitative analysis of survey data collected from public child welfare employees (n = 168) as they completed master's of social work courses in a weekend/hybrid program, to examine their perceptions of ability to apply classroom learning to practice. The program, which combined a focus on direct practice and management, was developed in partnership with the state's public child welfare agency, during a period of systemic change and case practice reform. Findings indicate that students readily transferred knowledge and skills to the workplace, albeit with some challenges. In particular, management courses appeared to provide an important framework in understanding the organizational context of practice.     

Preparing to Be President on Day One

Nearly 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to handle his transition planning; the day after the election, Clifford handed Kennedy a single memorandum. Transition for today's president-elect is much more complex. Managing the shift from campaigning to governing is the president-elect's greatest challenge and biggest opportunity. According to Martha Joynt Kumar in her foregoing essay, the newly elected would do well to learn from the successes and failures of their predecessors. In short, the risks rooted in the inexperience and hubris of new presidents may be mitigated or avoided by knowledge gained from analysis of transition precedents. In this essay, the author provides a practitioner's checklist of dos and don'ts drawn from his experience as a manager and advisor in presidential transitions.     

Rationality and Rhetoric: The Contribution To Social Care Policy

Between 1982 and 1992 Roy Griffiths, then Managing Director of the Sainsbury supermarket chain, wrote two reports which led to significant changes in the organization and management of health and social services in the UK. This article provides a detailed account of the policy process which led to the latter of these reports, which dealt with community care, in order to assesses Griffiths' personal contribution to policy making.     

Transition, the Evolution of Stock Market Efficiency and Entry into EU: The Case of Romania

In this paper we demonstrate that the measurement of stock market efficiency is an important activity in establishing whether eastern European countries satisfy the Copenhagen Criteria for EU membership. Specifically, we argue that developing an efficient stock market should be an important policy focus for countries with aspirations to join the EU as it helps to demonstrate the existence of a functioning market economy. We illustrate this issue by examining the evolution of stock market efficiency in the Bucharest Stock Exchange from mid-1997 to September 2002. We use a GARCH model on daily price data and model the disturbances using the Student-t distribution to allow for ‘fat-tails’. We find strong evidence of inefficiency in the Bucharest Stock Exchange in that the lagged stock price index is a significant predictor of the current price index. This result is robust to the inclusion of variables controlling for calendar effects of the sort that have been observed in more developed stock markets. The level of inefficiency appears to diminish over time and we find evidence consistent with stock market efficiency in Romania after January 2000.