‘It’s a Harsh Fact of Life with the RMA’: neo-liberalism and the realities of community sports facility development by the private sector in New Zealand

Despite the importance of facilities as primary sites for delivery of leisure and sport services, there has been a scarcity of academic literature on the provision of community sports facilities and the processes through which they are developed. In particular, this paper provides empirical analysis of leisure facility provision with a focus on practice and experience of policy and planning actors. By employing a case study approach and semi-structured interviews, the study identified a sharp contrast between the discourse of neo-liberalism and the realities of a highly regulated environment for the private sector under a national legislation of New Zealand, namely the Resource Management Act 1991. While both public and private actors recognised benefits of the resource consent process in mitigating the negative environmental impacts and facilitating public input, the findings also revealed its potential impediments to both private and philanthropic developments and their potential resultant benefits to communities and social citizenship due to its costly, restrictive and undifferentiated nature. Consequently, the paper suggests that future research needs to examine empirical evidence of how social citizenship and citizen engagement are enhanced by both public and private sectors through planning and development of community sports facilities and services.     

Exploring pilgrim satisfaction on facilities for religious events: a case of Ratha Yatra at Puri

This article relates to the annual Ratha Yatra festival at Puri, India, and aims at quantifying the pilgrim perception of the event on three major aspects of every facility – adequacy, quality, and signage – to measure their satisfaction. A questionnaire survey (N?=?680) was conducted, from which a five-factor structure was extracted using exploratory principal component analysis, further examined through partial least squares-path modeling. The final model was found to have significant positive effects on three factors that comprised adequacy and quality of physiological needs, quality of ancillary facilities, and signage. The outcome may be utilized in planning other pilgrim events for achieving a higher pilgrim satisfaction score.     

Opportunities and pitfalls for researchers to contribute to the design of evidence-based agricultural policies: lessons from Uganda

Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context. We identify opportunities and pitfalls to strengthen science engagement in agricultural policy design by analysing the types of evidence required, and how it was shared and used during policy development. Qualitative tools captured stakeholders' perspectives of agricultural policies and their status in the policy cycle. Subsequent multi-level studies identified crop growth constraints and quantified yield gaps which were used to compute the economic analyses of policy options that subsequently contributed to sub-national program planning. The study identified a need to generate relevant evidence within a short time 'window' to influence policy design, power influence by different stakeholders and quality of stakeholder interaction. Opportunities for evidence integration surfaced at random phases of policy development due to researchers’ ’embededness’ within co-management and coordination structures.     

财政分权对全要素生产率的影响--基于“省直管县”改革的准自然实验

"省直管县"改革一改以往"省-市-县"的管理模式,有助于提高县级政府的财政分权水平。为缓解内生性,将"省直管县"改革视为一项准自然实验,构建双重差分模型检验了财政分权对全要素生产率的因果效应。研究发现:①财政分权对全要素生产率的正向促进作用高于负面阻碍作用,但不同形式的分权影响有异质性,具体来说财权的下放有利于全要素生产率的提高,经济社会事务管理权限的下放则不利于。②当地方政府自主权提高时,其"重生产、轻服务"的支出偏好,使得当地基础设施供给增加,而能够增强地方软实力、加快创新要素集聚的公共服务供给相应减少,造成了全要素生产率的损失,导致在经济高质量高效益增长中政府"有形之手"的作用发挥不够。③随着改革的推进,财政分权对全要素生产率的正向作用逐渐减弱,并不再显著。据此,从合理划分省以下政府的事权与支出责任,充实基层政府财力;提高公共服务类指标在政府官员政绩考核中的权重,加强各县(市)政府间的合作,实现各自为政的地方经济向统一市场整合等方面提出政策建议。     

黑龙江省农村公共产品供给问题研究

农村公共产品的供给对农村经济与社会发展有着重要影响.当前,黑龙江省农村公共产品供给普遍短缺,已严重制约了农村经济的发展和农民收入的快速增长.解决黑龙江省农村公共产品供给不良的对策应是:积极推进城乡一体化进程,创建新的公共产品供给体制;理顺中央、省、地方各级政府的公共产品供给责任,做到财权与事权对等;区分公共产品的层次,进一步明确投资主体.     

Do dictatorships redistribute more?

This paper examines the effect of political institutions on fiscal redistribution for a country-level panel from 1960–2010. Using data on Gini coefficients before and after government intervention, we apply a measure of effective fiscal redistribution that reflects the effect of taxes and transfers on income inequality. Our findings clearly indicate that non-democratic regimes demonstrate significantly greater direct fiscal redistribution. Subsequently, we employ fiscal data in an attempt to enlighten this puzzling empirical finding. We find that dictatorial regimes rely more heavily on cash transfers that exhibit a direct impact on net inequality and consequently on the difference between market and net inequality (i.e., effective fiscal redistribution), whereas democratic regimes devote a larger amount of resources to public inputs (health and education) that may influence market inequality but not the difference between market and net inequality per se. We argue that the driving force behind the observed differences within the pattern on government spending and effective fiscal redistribution is that democratic institutions lead survival-oriented leaders to care more for the private market, and thus to follow policies that enhance the productivity of the whole economy.     

Arbitrage opportunities,liquidity provision,and trader types in an index option market

This study examines the impact of arbitrage in put–call futures parity (PCFP) violations on option market liquidity and explores the liquidity provision process by trader type during periods of arbitrage exploitation. Using a unique data set comprising the complete history of transactions, we find that PCFP violations contain toxic arbitrage opportunities. Hence, more frequent toxic arbitrage opportunities can cause liquidity to deteriorate because arbitrageurs create adverse selection costs and order imbalances in the option market. In addition, when the law of one price breaks down, market makers dominate by providing liquidity compared with individual, domestic, and foreign institutional traders.     

An excellent approximation for the m out of n day provision

The m out of n day provision (MooN) of convertible bonds is difficult to handle. To approximating the MooN better, this paper proposes an approach named the conditional range probability (CRP). CRP is the simulated probability of the MooN being reached within a price range at a future time, conditional on today’s price of the underlying, and can be incorporated into any conventional derivatives pricing method. For a purposely designed exotic call option with a 20 out of 30 day provision, CRP under finite difference is found to outperform significantly several existing approaches and produce a mean pricing error of 1% over a wide range of initial underlying prices for the exotic call. The result implies that finite difference utilizing CRP will yield excellent approximating prices for convertible bonds.     

Parental perception of lunch schemes in Danish kindergartens: A cross-sectional survey

Children’s daily consumption of food in childcare institutions has an impact on their public health nutritional status. The collaboration of parents and employees of kindergartens is important to ensure healthy eating habits among the next generation. Consequently, evaluations of lunch schemes are important to provide a good foundation for enhancing communication between home and institutional settings. The aim of this article is to assess parental satisfaction and identify themes related to parental perceptions of lunch schemes in Danish kindergartens. A survey was developed and distributed in four kindergartens with lunch schemes. A combination of closed and open questions were used to evaluate satisfaction and identify positive and negative aspects of the lunch schemes. Parents of 93 children participated in the study and the response rate was 55%. Eighty-nine percent expressed satisfaction with their children’s lunch scheme. According to parents, the most positive aspects were that lunch schemes serve a variety of food, their ability to prevent neophobia, that children learn that eating is a social occasion, and that the arrangements offer convenience to parents. The negative aspects identified were the lack of communication between the kindergarten childcare institutions and the parents regarding the food. Overall, parents are very satisfied with their children’s lunch schemes; however, the information between institutions and parents could be improved.     

Trade-offs and Synergies: Horizontalization and legitimacy in the Swiss wastewater sector

Recent public sector reforms have led to horizontalization, where public service providers have increased autonomy from the state. Such changes lead to queries about democratic responsiveness (input legitimacy), democratic procedures and efficacy (throughput legitimacy) and effectiveness (output legitimacy). The following question thus emerges: how and why does horizontalization affect input, output and throughput legitimacy? This inquiry is addressed by analysing two Swiss wastewater service providers with differing degrees of horizontalization. The analysis indicates that horizontalization leads to more synergies than trade-offs between the legitimacy dimensions. Particularly, input and throughput legitimacy can play a pivotal role in attaining citizens’ acceptance.