Supplier behaviour and public contracting in the English agency nursing market

The worldwide expansion in the use of private firms to deliver public services and infrastructure has promoted a substantial literature on public sector contract and relationship management. This literature is currently dominated by the notion that supplier relationships should be based upon trust. Less prominent are more sceptical approaches that emphasize the need to assiduously manage potential supplier exploitation and opportunism. This article addresses this imbalance by focusing upon the recent experience of the English National Health Service (NHS) in its dealings with its nursing agencies. Between 1997 and 2001, the NHS was subjected to considerable exploitation and opportunism. This forced managers to adopt a supply strategy based upon an assiduous use of e-auctions, framework agreements and quality audits. The article assesses the effectiveness of this strategy and reflects upon whether a more defensive approach to contract and relationship management offers a viable alternative to one based upon trust.     

Attachment and the Development of Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: The Role of Regulating Positive and Negative Affect

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Although widely accepted, attachment theory’s hypothesis that insecure attachment is associated with the development of depressive symptoms through emotion...     

Evaluating competitiveness impacts of regulatory reforms in the Brazilian cashew industry

This work evaluates regulatory impacts on the Brazilian cashew industry through the pilot use of CIBER, a value-chain-based approach, to identify and measure regulatory constraints and to enact regulatory reforms in donor-funded development projects. Drawing from secondary sources complemented by primary field research, all the CIBER-suggested steps are followed. The results reveal that tax and credit regulations should be priorities to improve the competitiveness of the cashew business in Brazil, and that CIBER can be an effective tool to expand industry analysis and to design reform strategies towards improved competitiveness.     

Anticorruption Commissions: The “Hong Kong Model” Revisited

The international donor community has, in the last few years, discouraged the use of specialised anticorruption bodies as the spearhead of the attack on corruption, for reasons that have never been sufficiently explained or critically examined.

The academic objections to replicating the Hong Kong solution in other countries are first, that the context in which corruption occurs in Hong Kong is unique and for that reason the solution cannot be exported; second, that the remedy is too strong, too dangerous to be applied elsewhere. The risk of an anticorruption body like the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) becoming an instrument of political oppression is simply too great to warrant its use; third, establishing and maintaining an anticorruption body at the strength required to deal with corruption is said to be inordinately costly. The fourth objection is a frontal assault on the very concept of an anticorruption body as a means of tackling corruption. The answer, according to this view, lies in governance and policy reform.

These objections have been adopted by the international donor institutions, apparently for reasons that have little to do with any in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of successful anticorruption bodies.

Over the past decade numerous alternative methods of tackling corruption have been proposed and attempted. The results have been disappointing.

By contrast, Hong Kong remains firmly on top of its corruption problem, the ICAC continues to enjoy a public support of 98–99% and this special administrative region of China continues to improve its standing in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), one of the few places in the world to do so. In Botswana where the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) was modelled on the ICAC with modifications, the country is rated the least corrupt in Africa by a considerable margin and is in the top 25% of countries worldwide. Madagascar which modelled its Bureau Indépendant Anti-Corruption (BIANCO) even more closely on the HK ICAC has made good progress in the short time it has been operational.

Is it not time to reconsider the rejection by the donor community of the “Hong Kong model?” Should we not be examining more profoundly than previously how Hong Kong managed to get and stay on top of corruption? Should the donor community not be helping those countries that have decided they want a separate anticorruption body get the design and the operational policies and practices right?     

The Effect of Distributive Politics on Electoral Participation: Evidence from 70 Million Agricultural Payments

Political Behavior - Policy feedbacks take place when public policies change mass participation and mobilize key constituencies. This can influence future rounds of policymaking and solidify...     

Rent seeking for madness: the political economy of mental asylums in the United States, 1870 to 1910

Public Choice - Recent studies indicate that the ideological stances of government parties no are longer associated with differences in total government spending. At the same time, we observe that...     

Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Risks of Prepaid Cards Instruments?

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have had, and will continue to have, wide-ranging influences on how the banking and finance industry operates. Making payments and transmitting money electronically or online are increasingly popular. An increased dependence on global electronic payment systems and the ability to move large amounts of money expeditiously across different jurisdiction, however, expose both payment processing companies and consumers to an evolving spectrum of threats such as fraud and money laundering. This article considers ways in which prepaid cards can be exploited by organised criminals and terrorists to launder their illicit proceeds of crime, and to transfer money anonymously and instantaneously over the globe for use by terrorist organisations. Risks identified in this article include recruiting card mules (e.g. international students) to purchase prepaid cards, and the mailing or shipping of prepaid cards out of the country without regulators being aware. To minimise risks of abuse by organised criminals and terrorists, legislation will need to adapt to deal with threats that organised criminals and terrorists seek to exploit. Future directions for research in relation to prepaid cards are also identified.

Voltammetric determination of cocaine in confiscated samples using a cobalt hexacyanoferrate film-modified electrode

In this work, a fast, non destructive voltammetric method for cocaine detection in acetonitrile medium using a platinum disk electrode chemically modified with cobalt-hexacyanoferrate (CoHCFe) film is described. The deposition of CoHCFe film at platinum disk (working electrode) was carried out in aqueous solution containing NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. Stability studies of the film and subsequent voltammetric analysis of cocaine were made in acetonitrile medium with NaClO₄ at 0.1 mol L⁻¹ as supporting electrolite. A reversible interaction between cocaine and CoHCFe at the film produces a proportional decrease of original peak current, due to the formation of a complex between cocaine and cobalt íons, with subsequent partial passivation of the film surface, being the intensity of current decrease used as analytical signal for cocaine. A linear dependence of cocaine detection was carried out in the range from 2.4 × 10⁻⁴ to 1.5 × 10⁻³ mol L⁻¹, with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.994 and a detection limit of 1.4 × 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹. The analysis of confiscated samples by the proposed method indicated cocaine levels from 37% to 95% (m/m) and these results were validated by comparison to HPLC technique, being obtained good correlation between both methods.     

Increased sensitivity for amplified STR alleles on capillary sequencers with BigDye XTerminator™

Free fluorescent dyes from PCR primers or amplification products can interfere with the interpretation of STR alleles in an electropherograph especially when the profiles have a low signal intensity. These artefacts can be removed by using a simple procedure based on BigDye^® XTerminator™. This procedure requires limited amounts of PCR product, allows to do several loadings on a capillary sequencer starting from the same purified PCR product and also increases the sensitivity for detection of less amplified loci.