Relationship between the curriculum system and the understanding of nutritional terms in elementary school children

To clarify the relation between the curriculum system and the understanding of nutrition terms, 944 students aged 8–12 years living in Japan, the USA and the UK, were asked about the recognition, medium for recognition, and understanding of nutrition terms. The effect of nutrition education from an early stage in elementary schools in the UK and the USA was confirmed. These results suggest the possibility of beginning nutrition education earlier in the elementary school in Japan. American students had paid attention to food labels. These results showed that a learning and teaching strategy founded on comprehensively based subjects in the USA had influenced good behaviour for dietary life. On the other hand, there was not a relationship between an understanding of nutrition terms and a developmental stage. Many students in three countries were influenced by television commercials to buy candy or soda. We think that it is important to develop a curriculum that includes practical learning and ensures hours of teaching for the purpose of acquirement of nutritional knowledge. It is also necessary to encourage critical thinking skills to evaluate television commercial messages through school lessons.     

The Impact of Market Orientation on the Internationalization of Retailing Firms: Tesco in Eastern Europe

This paper investigates a Western retailer's market orientation levels in two emerging markets. We examine whether the market orientation-company performance link holds true for retailers in emerging economies, despite environmental differences. By using concepts from key studies we have assimilated a fully representative model - applied through interviews with top management from Tesco and its subsidiaries and affiliates in Hungary and Slovenia. Using this example, we find that the market orientation-business performance link is valid for Western retailers in emerging economies. Here, the retailer applied market orientation predominately through; the use of matching with suppliers of own brand goods; top management emphasis on market orientation and risk taking. Intelligence generation and dissemination was exercised via global processes such as brand review.     

Getting Wisconsin to work

Since the mid-1980s the state of Wisconsin has been pre-eminent in the field of welfare reform. With a consensus across the political spectrum, the state has pioneered a series of bold and innovative programmes which have slashed cash assistance by $30 million a month, compared with 1987 levels, and reduced its caseload by 85%. The latest programme, Wisconsin Works, is known as W-2, and is widely regarded as the most successful of the many welfare-to-work initiatives which have appeared throughout the USA.     

The value of intellectual property rights to firms and society

Economists view intellectual property rights (IPRs) as policytools for encouraging innovation, but they recognize that theycan also inhibit competition. There are many types of IPRs andinstitutions concerned with their administration. We begin byoutlining how these complex and varied rights are supposed towork and how they interact with other characteristics of firmsand markets. We then survey the available literature on patents,trade marks, and copyright to assess the value of these IPRsto firms and the costs to firms of acquiring and defending theirrights. The paper concludes with suggestions for topics requiringfurther research to inform public policy better.     

Aid Quality and Donor Rankings

This paper offers new measures of aid quality covering 38 bilateral and multilateral donors, as well as new insights about the robustness and usefulness of such measures. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the follow-up 2008 Accra Agenda for Action have focused attention on common donor practices that reduce the development impact of aid. Using 18 underlying indicators that capture these practices—derived from the OECD-DAC’s Survey for Monitoring the Paris Declaration, the new AidData database, and the DAC aid tables—the authors construct an overall aid quality index and four coherently defined sub-indexes on aid selectivity, alignment, harmonization, and specialization. Compared with earlier indicators used in donor rankings, this indicator set is more comprehensive and representative of the range of donor practices addressed in the Paris Declaration, improving the validity, reliability, and robustness of rankings. One of the innovations is to increase the validity of the aid quality indicators by adjusting for recipient characteristics, donor aid volumes, and other factors. Despite these improvements in data and methodology, the authors caution against overinterpretation of overall indexes such as these. Alternative plausible assumptions regarding weights or the inclusion of additional indicators can still produce marked shifts in the ranking of some donors, so that small differences in overall rankings are not meaningful. Moreover, because the performance of some donors varies considerably across the four sub-indexes, these sub-indexes may be more useful than the overall index in identifying donors’ relative strengths and weaknesses.     

Where Do Unions Add Value? Predominant Organizing Principle,Union Strength and Manufacturing Productivity Growth in the OECD

This article deploys comparative historical data on 14 OECD countries to examine the significance of predominant union structure for the impact of union strength on the (medium‐term) growth in hourly labour productivity in manufacturing. The analysis shows that where craft and general unionism predominates, union strength has a deleterious impact on productivity growth. Where enterprise unionism predominates, union strength is irrelevant. However, where industrial unionism predominates, union strength promotes productivity growth. These effects exist independently of established economic influences on aggregate productivity growth. The findings are interpreted as displaying the importance of the character of the governance that unions provide for their productivity impact.     

Rio reconstruction and flood prevention in Brazil

Until the Rio Flood Reconstruction and Prevention Project, disaster-related projects funded by the World Bank focused primarily on reconstruction, especially immediate, short-term recovery. The Rio de Janeiro project was notable as a targeted effort to reduce disaster vulnerability by promoting long-term multisectoral development strategies. It taught that reconstruction projects must address specific disaster vulnerabilities as well as cross-sectoral needs in Improving urban environmental management. The project represents a significant step towards developing a strategy for long-term prevention and mitigation of natural disasters and environmental degradation. It is also a good example of an effort to develop support for long-term environmental policies by strengthening indigenous managerial and planning capabilities—something that was not possible in short-term recovery projects.