An Investigation of a Community-based Intervention for Socially Isolated Parents with a History of Child Maltreatment

A randomized field trial was conducted to test the effectiveness of a community-based intervention to enhance the prosocial interaction and psychological well-being of urban, Head Start parents with a history of child maltreatment. One-hundred and sixteen socially isolated parents participated. Forty of these parents had a history of child maltreatment. Maltreatment and non-maltreatment parents were assigned randomly to intervention and control conditions. The intervention involved 10 group-training sessions focusing on the relationship between stress and social support. Analyses revealed a significant main effect for the intervention group with intervention parents reporting lower levels of stress and higher levels of social activity than controls. No main effects for maltreatment status or maltreatment by intervention group interactions were found. Implications for community-based treatment were discussed.     

How Policy Rules Shape the Structure and Performance of Collaborative Governance Arrangements

Local food system governance increasingly occurs in collaborative venues at the local, state, and regional levels. Prominent examples of such are food policy councils (FPCs). FPCs take a systemic approach to improve local food systems by including diverse stakeholders to advise on policy development. The authors study public FPCs to understand how policies structure the stakeholder composition and goals of FPCs and how FPCs’ stakeholder composition facilitates and/or impedes performance. Data come from a content analysis of policies that mandate the structure and functions of public FPCs and interviews with FPC representatives. Findings indicate that FPCs connected to a broader array of food policy actors in their communities produce more diverse policy outputs, but this outcome is tempered by whether council members represent personal or organizational interests.     

一部系统研究刘少奇社会主义思想的力作——评《刘少奇社会主义思想研究》

董一冰撰写的<刘少奇社会主义思想研究>,已由中共党史出版社出版.该书集学术性、理论性和史料性于一体,既是我国起步较晚的刘少奇社会主义研究的崭新成果,又是近年来系统、深入研究刘少奇社会主义理论的一部力作.作者遵循逻辑与历史相统一的原则,以求真务实的科学态度,力图反映刘少奇社会主义思想的全貌,因而使这部研究刘少奇社会主义思想的佳作具有鲜明特点.     

An empirical testing of informational efficiency in Bangladesh capital market

We investigate how efficiently the stock market participants incorporate the information contained in money supply changes into stock prices in an emerging economy like Bangladesh. Of particular interest is to test how the changes in monetary aggregates directly affect the stock prices through asset changes and indirectly through their effects on real economic activity. We have considered the monthly series of the real stock returns (P) and examine the relationship between stock returns and monetary aggregates from 1980 to 2008. We also include the exchange rate of US dollar against Bangladeshi Taka and industrial production index. The presence of cointegration between stock prices and monetary aggregates indicate long-run predictability of the Bangladesh stock market. The short-run dynamics between monetary aggregates and real stock return, relied on theoretically motivated long-run restrictions, are analyzed using an empirical structural VAR model. The dynamic response of the real stock returns to changes in macroeconomic variables (such as broad money supply, exchange rates), particularly its lagged responses to real economic activity generates inefficiency in the Dhaka Stock Exchange. The findings of this article indicate that informational inefficiency exists in the stock market of Bangladesh due to the presence of unidirectional causality. To be efficient, the infrastructure of the SEC should be modernized, revaluation of the net asset value of the companies should be audited by the affiliated firms of the SEC, demutualization should be done as early as possible, private placement, issue of preference share and book building methods must be under rule based. Insider trading should be strictly prohibited.     

Research capacity building through twinning: experiences from a Danish–Malaysian twinning project

Twinning and its contribution to institutional capacity building in developing countries is the theme of an ongoing debate in Public Administration and Development. Unlike earlier contributions this article focuses on twinning in the context of research capacity enhancement. Using a 3 year Danish–Malaysian twinning research project as case our objective is to evaluate whether the general premises regarding a twinning project, as formulated by the Danish Development Cooperation Agency (Danida), appropriately support the twinning ambitions when the capacities in focus concern research. Besides institutional capacity building, twinning is expected to favour local ownership, involvement of the Danish resource base and continuing of cooperation after termination of funding. From 21 semi‐structured interviews with project participants it was found that although new research capacities had been gained, the prospects on continued cooperation are rather discouraging, both sides pointing to the lack of truly joint research experiences as the main reason. To care for this important incentive, the twinning premises are recommended to be modified to allow for the Northern resource base to advance its own research, and for Southern partner to demonstrate in‐house research capacities. Further, the North–South balance in project management needs to be more equal. This apart, the twinning premises appear sound. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) development projects and entrepreneurial potential of locals

This research explores a very important issue arising from the initiation of China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan, as the major impact seems to be focused towards small businesses and how they will cope in this competitive market once Chinese businesses enter in the country. According to scholars and officials, CPEC will generate several business opportunities for the local Pakistani community. However, studies related to the CPEC project are limited and only focused on the development of the CPEC project in various aspects alone. The existing study examined the local entrepreneur's attitude and intention in the context of CPEC using a sample of 255 survey questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Data were gathered from the existing business community in Karachi, Pakistan. The results validated most of the hypotheses showing positive attitude towards entrepreneurs and intention towards CPEC development project. Specifically, local transportation and accessibility of cities show a significant relationship with a positive attitude. Similarly, the attitude of entrepreneurs also shows a positive relationship with entrepreneur's intention towards CPEC development projects. Findings have important theoretical and practical implications for policymakers of CPEC in creating an overall entrepreneurial ecosystem.     

The likelihood of social choice violations in rank sum scoring: algorithms and evidence from NCAA cross country running

Recent contributions have used combinatorial algorithms to determine the likelihood of particular social choice violations in rank sum scoring. Given the broad importance of rank sum scoring (e.g., in non-parametric statistical testing, sporting competition, and mathematical competition), it is important to establish the level of ambiguity generated by this aggregation rule. Combinatorial likelihoods are naïve, however, in that they assume each possible outcome sequence for an event to be equally likely. We develop a computational algorithm to extend upon previous combinatorial results as to the likelihood of a violation of transitivity or independence in rank sum scoring. We use a similar computational scoring approach to analyze the empirically-observed likelihood of each such violation across fourteen NCAA Cross Country Championships. Within the data, rank sum scoring fails to specify a robust winning team (i.e., one that also rank sum wins against each possible subset of opponents) in 4 of 14 cases. Overall, we find that empirical likelihoods of social choice violations are consistently (significantly) overestimated by combinatorial expectations. In the NCAA data, we find correlated ability (quality) levels within team (group) and discuss this as a cause of lower empirical likelihoods. Combinatorial analysis proves reliable in predicting the order of empirical likelihoods across violation type and event setting.     

Empirical Evidence on Human Trafficking and Migration-Debt Contracts in Bangladesh

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the payments illegal migrants make to traffickers. It covers the total amounts of these payments, the incidence of migration-debt (or shared) contracts, and the value of the deferred payment component under these shared contracts. Data on illegal migrants from three field surveys conducted in Bangladesh from April 2009 to November 2010 are used. The results show that the total payments made to traffickers vary with easily observed characteristics (gender, age, marital status) but do not vary with details of the migration process (training provided, time spent in the trafficker’s queue). These relationships are consistent with exploitation. Migration-debt contracts are more prevalent when the costs of illegal migration are relatively high, which adds empirical support to theoretical models such as Friebel and Guriev (2006). Contrary to existing reports, we document variations in fees for illegal passage across individuals.     

Assessing Public Participation Initiatives in Local Government Decision-Making in Malaysia

Increased public participation in government decisions contributes significantly to the enhancement of grass-roots democracy. This article assesses the level of involvement of local citizens in local government decisions in Malaysia. Public participation was assessed using questionnaires on the range and extent of initiatives used by local government. The questionnaires also probed citizens’ perceptions of these initiatives and expectations for greater citizen empowerment. Data were gathered from 206 local citizens randomly selected from six local authorities in the northern region of Malaysia. The findings reveal a desire on the part of local citizens to participate in their local government decision-making process.