New Labour and Community Protests: the Case of the Govanhill Swimming Pool Campaign, Glasgow

Taking the case study of a community based protest against the closure of a swimming pool in Glasgow, this paper seeks to raise important critical questions about some of the key ideas informing New Labour's urban policy agenda: social capital and active community. It argues that normative notions of active citizenship seriously conflict with bottom-up community protests, highlighting in the process issues of power and inequality. Against claims that New Labour is promoting government through community, here we claim that in the context of this community protest, there was government against community.     

Regulatory Policy: OECD Experience and Evidence

In the past 20 years a key topic of public-sector reform inOECD countries has been the emergence of regulatory policy.During this period, the nature of regulation has undergone profoundand rapid change. This paper reviews the development of regulatorypolicy in OECD countries over the last quarter-century. It identifiesa range of tools and institutions that have been used by OECDcountries to develop high-quality regulation. The analysis attemptsto show that while there is considerable commonality on broadobjectives of regulatory policy, considerably diversity remainsin the implementation of regulatory policy across OECD countries. Footnotes ¹ E-mail address: nikolai.malyshev{at}oecd.org     

Mapping and analysing virtual outcrops

Laser scanning is a very efficient way to generate realistic, high-resolution digital models of 3-D geological outcrops. This paper discusses the methodologies involved in the creation and analysis of virtual outcrops, based on laser scanner data. The visualisation of the laser scanner data as a photorealistic 3-D object is described. Geological features picked out on the virtual outcrop (e.g. fractures, faults or bedding planes) can be extrapolated outward, into space, and inward, into the subsurface, using tension surfaces.     

Forecasting the volatility of S&P depositary receipts using GARCH-type models under intraday range-based and return-based proxy measures

We employ four various GARCH-type models, incorporating the skewed generalized t (SGT) errors into those returns innovations exhibiting fat-tails, leptokurtosis and skewness to forecast both volatility and value-at-risk (VaR) for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (SPDRs) from 2002 to 2008. Empirical results indicate that the asymmetric EGARCH model is the most preferable according to purely statistical loss functions. However, the mean mixed error criterion suggests that the EGARCH model facilitates option buyers for improving their trading position performance, while option sellers tend to favor the IGARCH/EGARCH model at shorter/longer trading horizon. For VaR calculations, although these GARCH-type models are likely to over-predict SPDRs' volatility, they are, nevertheless, capable of providing adequate VaR forecasts. Thus, a GARCH genre of model with SGT errors remains a useful technique for measuring and managing potential losses on SPDRs under a turbulent market scenario.     

Militarism,Realism, Just War,or Nonviolence? Critical Geopolitics and the Problem of Normativity

Despite illuminating multiple modalities by which armed conflict is discursively justified, critical geopolitics can be criticised for providing a weak normative engagement with the social institution and practices of warfare. This has limited the impact of this school of thought outside of geography and critical security studies at a time when the ethics of military intervention have been prominent in public debate. This article explores the moral discourse of critical geopolitics through an examination of Gerard Toal's writings on Iraq and Bosnia. This scholarship is reviewed in the light of Coates's typology of major traditions of moral reflection on war – militarism, realism, just war theory, and pacifism/nonviolence. This analysis interrogates Toal's narratives, in which American military intervention was advocated in the Former Yugoslavia and opposed in Iraq. This suggests that rather than a thoroughgoing commitment to pacifism/nonviolence, or a blanket cynicism about American foreign policy, Toal's thinking includes an underlying attachment to some form of just war reasoning. However, its implicit and partial appropriation leads to a certain incoherence and selectivity that calls for further reflection. This presents a challenge to critical geopolitics. If it chooses to engage more explicitly with just war theory, its insights into identity and militarism could in turn inform a reworking of aspects of the theory, thereby facilitating critical geopolitics' engagement with wider public anti-militaristic modes of discourse. However, as this risks blunting the political potential of the project and repeating the mistakes of twentieth-century geopolitical thought, the paper concludes with a call for a wholehearted commitment to nonviolence.     

The Rise and Fall of Foreign Direct Investment in Laos, 1988‐2000

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has played an important role in the development of Laos since the country embarked on an economic transition and business liberalisation programme in the late 1980s. However, in recent years Laos has witnessed a marked contraction in its cumulative FDI inflows. This article provides a profile of FDI activity in Laos over the past decade and identifies the various factors behind the rise, and subsequent decline, in foreign investment inflows during the 1990s. The article concludes by suggesting some of the ways in which Lao policy makers might seek to revive the country's flagging FDI sector.     

You can't always get what you want: The impact of the UK Jobseeker's Allowance

In 1996 the UK made major changes to its welfare system for the support of the unemployed with the introduction of the Jobseeker's Allowance. This tightened the work search requirements needed for eligibility for benefit. It resulted in large flows out of claimant status, but, this paper concludes, not primarily into employment. The movement out of claimant status was largest for those with low levels of search activity. But, this paper finds no evidence of increased job search activity as a result of this change.     

Analysis of ultra-high-frequency financial data using advanced Fourier transforms

This paper presents a novel application of advanced methods from Fourier analysis to the study of ultra-high-frequency financial data. The use of Lomb–Scargle Fourier transform, provides a robust framework to take into account the irregular spacing in time, minimising the computational effort. Likewise, it avoids complex model specifications (e.g. ACD or intensity models) or resorting to traditional methods, such as (linear or cubic) interpolation and regular resampling, which not only cause artifacts in the data and loss of information, but also lead to the generation and use of spurious information.