A note on the marginal benefits and efficiency of goods provided by local government

This paper focuses on the specification error found in many of the empirical studies dealing with the economic efficiency of local government in providing goods such as education. The paper argues that the compensated demand function—rather than the ordinary demand function—should be used in order to derive the marginal benefits of a given good. The ordinary demand functions used in previous studies would lead to inflated estimates of the marginal benefits and, therefore, to inaccurate empirical results. The paper presents a compensated demand function derived from a linear expenditure demand system. Using public education as an example, it demonstrates how such a statistically unobservable compensated demand function can be used to produce correct measurements of marginal benefits of a public service provided by local government. The results of the investigation into the efficiency aspects of public education will also be discussed.     

Transfer of learning from management development programmes: testing the Holton model

Transfer of learning from management development programmes has been described as the effective and continuing application back at work of the knowledge and skills gained on those programmes. It is a very important issue for organizations today, given the large amounts of investment in these programmes and the small amounts of that investment that actually translates into an improved individual and organizational performance. This paper describes the testing of the Holton model of learning transfer and suggests amendments to the model where appropriate. A sample of participants on a management development programme within the Irish health service completed the Learning Transfer System Inventory based on the Holton model. The data obtained were analysed using multiple regression and partial correlation techniques. Results indicate that the model does adequately represent the effects of its factors, although a slightly revised model is presented. Important relationships between factors are identified, and the central role of the learners’ personal capacity for transfer (hitherto unreported in the literature) and their motivation to transfer in facilitating transfer is highlighted. In practical terms, the tested model can be used as a diagnostic tool by identifying individual, training design and work environment transfer issues in need of attention and by developing strategies to deal with them. It can also be used as a framework for the evaluation of training and development interventions, examining factors outside the traditional range of most training evaluation efforts and providing a more complete picture of the success or otherwise of that intervention.     

Labour supply of informal caregivers

This paper contributes to the informal caregiving literature by investigating the relationship between caregiving and the caregiver's labour market decisions. Its main interest is in determining the factors that affect the caregiver's decisions to remain in the work force and the amount of time he/she chooses to work. A major finding is that non-wage income, wage rate, education, the make-up of the caregiving network, and a host of identifiable sociodemo-graphic factors influence the caregiver's labour market decisions. Another finding is that some of the sociodemographic factors, e.g., gender and living arrangements, affect the decision to work but not the number of hours of work, and vice versa. The paper concludes with a discussion of future studies and public policy implications.     

Rent Extraction by an Unregulated Essential Facility

This paper shows that consumers may benefit when a regulator chooses not to regulate a final product in an industry characterized by an unregulated essential facility sold through non-linear tariffs. Two main reasons drive this result. First, the regulator maximizes social welfare and values the final good production more than the producer itself. Second, the regulator has access to an extra source of financing with the public funds. Therefore, the essential facility seller can ask more of the regulator than of the final good producer.     

The everyday accountant and researching his reality

It is the contention of this paper that accounting researchers have been dominated in thier research methodology by methods supposedly adopted from the natural sciences. It is argued that it is time that attention was paid to the possible use of radically different “naturalistic” (or “interpretive humanistic”) research approaches in order both to focus research more closely on the concerns of practitioners and to give greater insight into everyday effects of accounting and the practices of accountants themselves.     

Is foreign exchange intervention by central banks bad news for debt markets?: A case of Reserve Bank of Australia's interventions 1986–2003

We investigate the effects of the Reserve Bank of Australia's foreign exchange interventions on the USD/AUD market and 90-day and 10-year interest rate futures markets for the period July 1986–December 2003. Using recently released revised and updated intervention data, we investigate contemporaneous and disaggregated intervention influences and find significant evidence for (i) intervention effectiveness in moderating the contemporaneous exchange rate movements especially if interventions were cumulative and large, (ii) exchange rate volatility reducing effect with a day's lag, (iii) undesirable interest rate movements following interventions in some periods compromising monetary policy effectiveness, and (iv) a volatility reducing effect of cumulative interventions in the 90-day rate, and a volatility increasing effect of large interventions in both the 90-day and 10-year rate futures. These findings are a unique and significant contribution to the prevailing literature as they demonstrate that the RBA's interventions matter not only for the foreign exchange market but also for the debt markets.     

Tourism and transformation: negotiating metaphors,experiencing change

The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gained analytically by considering how notions and experiences of transformation are addressed, negotiated and purposefully deployed in tourism contexts. We conclude with an outline of each of the contributions to this special issue, stressing that the collection re-opens the issue of transformation in tourism and provides new insights into how experiences-turned-metaphors and metaphors-turned-experiences influence both the travel experience and the development of theory.