Chronic consumer debtors: the need for specific intervention

Many studies of consumer debtors have identified risk factors associated with chronic consumer debt. Chronic consumer debtors exist in an environment of ongoing efforts to survive financially and meet their debt commitments. Despite otherwise favourable economic conditions for the community at large such as low interest rates and low levels of unemployment, the chronic consumer debtor remains continuously at peril of overcommitment. An analysis of financial counselling interviews in New South Wales (the largest state in Australia) has been used to identify the group that the authors believe to be most at risk of chronic consumer debt in Australia. Other independent studies are provided to support the choice of the identified group. The situation for chronic consumer debtors is contrasted to the situation for acute cases. While financial literacy and support programmes can be provided to the community, the ability to target programmes towards a specifically identifiable group concentrates activities on measures aimed to alleviate the distress caused by ongoing financial hardship for one particular consumer group. The challenge of reducing chronic consumer debt has the potential to raise awareness and understanding of risk factors for consumer debtors generally. Thus, concentrated efforts towards alleviating chronic consumer debt may lead to a reduction in consumer financial overcommitment.     

The perfect match: Factors that characterize the AACSB International initial accreditation host school and mentor relationship

Initial Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International accreditation involves a process of pairing mentor and host schools to provide guidance and feedback on the congruence of the host school with the accreditation standards. The mentor serves as the primary resource for assisting the host school in identifying gaps with the standards, and the development and implementation of an initial self-evaluation report to detail steps to meet the standards. Matching mentors and host schools to encourage an effective relationship over a 5-year period would seem to be critical to achieving initial accreditation. In the present study, eight factors related to matching the mentors and host schools were identified. Results revealed only two significant differences between host business schools and mentors, indicating that the process is working well. Based on the results, ways to sustain and enhance the mentor–host school relationship are discussed.     

Manpower planning models and techniques: A descriptive survey

The authors review the reasons for the increasing need for manpower planning. The chief characteristics of the four main types of manpower planning are described. First is the technique of using opinion or informed judgment, including the somewhat unique Delphi technique. The use of matrix models is described for both executive and management manpower planning. Third, the authors identify the characteristics of quantitative techniques, dividing them into three categories: statistical methods, operations research methods, and network techniques. Finally, three computer simulation models are described, including the Weber model. Ten subjective criteria for evaluating the selected techniques are proposed, and an evaluation of the selected techniques is presented in a matrix form.     

Perfection, the infinite horizon and dominance

Consideration of time and independence, brought into focus by the example of perfection in the infinite horizon, leads the author to a modified contraction by dominance solution for game theory.     

The role of research incentives in medical research organisations

This paper investigates the effectiveness of institutionalised financial incentive programmes designed to encourage researchers to engage in high‐impact publishing and commercialisation. Five Australian medical research institutes were analysed, three of which were offering financial incentives for high‐impact publishing and two offering financial incentives for commercialisation engagement. The perception of incentives for commercialisation and research productivity within the organisations with incentive schemes was compared with that of organisations without these schemes. We found that incentive policies are effective only if researchers already hold desirable goals with regard to their societal contracts, effectively ‘crowding in’ these behaviours. Researchers also stated that they believed that high‐impact publishing and commercialisation engagement were only possible for large groups of authors and fields. For researchers in smaller fields, the current structures of incentives were ineffective as incentives but instead acted as rewards for when these activities did occur. Alternatively, the existence of these incentives offered researchers options for salary remuneration, attracting high‐quality researchers and increasing the organisation's level of prestige as a result. It is recommended that institutional incentive programmes should concentrate on controlling field differences in order to effectively influence rather than simply reward researcher behaviour.     

Audience Segmentation of Kentucky Mothers by Nonparticipation Status in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,Infants, and Children

We identify women most and least likely to discontinue participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Kentucky WIC program management information system data from 2012 to 2013 was explored through a retrospective cohort study. Audience segmentation identified unique groups with respect to nonparticipation. Presumptive eligibility for Medicaid was the strongest predictor of nonparticipation. Among those who were not presumptively eligible, women who were the only ones in their households enrolled in the program were at higher risk of nonparticipation. Outreach strategies at the point of enrollment or when presumptive eligibility for Medicaid is granted could mitigate further nonparticipation.     

VALUE OF IMPROVED LONG-RANGE WEATHER INFORMATION

An important human welfare implication of climate involves effects of interannual variation in temperature and precipitation on agriculture. Year-to-year variations in U.S. climate result from El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a quasi-periodic redistribution of heat and momentum in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The study described here represents a preliminary assessment of the value to the entire U.S. agricultural sector of improved ENSO forecasts in the southeastern United States. This interdisciplinary assessment combines data and models from meteorology, plant sciences, and economics under a value of information framework based on Bayesian decision theory. An economic model of the U.S. agricultural sector uses changes in yields for various ENSO phases to translate physical (yield) effects of ENSO changes into economic effects on producers and on domestic and foreign consumers. The value of perfect information to agriculture is approximately $145 million. The economic value of an imperfect forecast is $96 million. These results suggest that increases in forecast accuracy have substantial economic value to agriculture.     

Conceptualising ‘shadow landscape’ in political ecology and rural studies

This paper develops the concept of ‘shadow landscape’ in order to describe the essential otherness and seemingly distinctive if ever contingent properties of in-between rural places characterised by historical depopulation and cultural marginalisation. It does so first of all through a critically sympathetic assessment of how these areas have been portrayed in the fields of political ecology and rural studies. In political ecology, reference has long been made to ‘depopulated areas’ whereas in rural studies there has been recently talk of ‘marginal cultures’. The result tends to be a ‘pre-given socio-spatial container’ (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003) that often obscures more than it reveals about these distinctive locations. The paper thereafter outlines the concept of shadow landscape as a means by which to understand these areas, and does so via a discussion of marginality, scale, socio-nature and ‘cultures of depopulation’. In the process, some of the key material and discursive issues that surround these ‘imagined communities’ are brought into focus. The conclusion considers a future research agenda based on an understanding shaped by the concept of shadow landscape.