Land Use and the Limits to (Regional) Governance: Some Lessons from Planning for Housing and Minerals in England

This paper examines the supposed shift from government to governance in the context of land-use planning in England and indicates some of the problems which surround increased regional autonomy in governmental systems. It is argued that decision-making processes around land use, especially when they concern conflicts between development and environmental protection, are not easily rendered into the flexible arrangements deemed characteristic of governance. Two case studies in the housing and minerals sectors – presented to illustrate this general argument – show the existence of strong ‘strategic lines’ which tend to subsume local representations and limit the formation of partnerships. In both cases, the strategic line comes dressed in the language of technical (numerical) forecasts and projections which raises problems for any local opposition to the thrust of the strategy. In conclusion it is argued that although some recasting of the planning regime in each sector is underway this has only served to highlight continuing problems in linking strategy and locality, especially in cases of conflict around land use, which regional governance may not easily alleviate. Cet article examine le prétendu changement du gouvernementà la gouvernance dans le contexte de la planification de l’utilisation du sol en Angleterre et montre certains des problèmes liés à la croissance de l’autonomie régionale dans les systèmes gouvernementaux. Les processus de décision concernant l’utilisation du sol, particulièrement quand ils concernent des conflits entre le développement et la protection de l’environnement, ne sont pas aisément résolus par les arrangements flexibles qui sont dits caractéristiques de la gouvernance. Deux cas d’étude dans les secteurs du logement et des mineraux – présentés afin d’illustrer l’argument général – montrent l’existence de fortes ‘strategic lines’ qui ont tendance à inclure les représentations locales et qui limitent la formation d’associations. Dans les deux cas, ‘the strategic line’ prend la forme des prévisions techniques (quantitative) et des projections, ce qui pose des problèmes pour toute opposition locale à la dynamique de la stratégie. En conclusion, bien que certains remaniements soient en cours dans le régime de planification de chaque secteur, ceci n’a servi qu’à souligner les problèmes continus des liens entre la stratégie et la localité, particulièrement en cas de conflit quant à l’utilisation du sol, que la gouvernance régionale risque de ne pas pouvoir résoudre facilement.     

Weekly scheduling models for traveling therapists

This paper presents a series of models that can be used to find weekly schedules for therapists who provide ongoing treatment to patients throughout a geographical region. In all cases, patient-appointment times and visit days are known prior to the beginning of the planning horizon. Variations in the models include single vs. multiple home bases, homogeneous vs. heterogeneous therapists, lunch break requirements, and a nonlinear cost structure for mileage reimbursement and overtime. The single home base and homogeneous therapist cases proved to be easy to solve and so were not thoroughly investigated. This left two cases of interest: the first included only lunch breaks while the second added nonlinear overtime and mileage reimbursement costs. For the first case, 40 data sets were solved, each consisting of either 15 or 20 therapists and between roughly 300 and 540 patient visits over five days. For each instance, we were able to obtain the minimum cost of providing residential healthcare services using a commercial solver. The results showed that CPU time increases more rapidly than total cost as the total number of visits grows. For the second case, which was much more difficult, it was necessary to develop heuristics to find good solutions quickly. Results for 5- through 20-therapist instances are presented and compared to the linear programming relaxation lower bounds. In the first of two parametric analyses, the tradeoff between the number of therapists on staff and the cost of providing service was examined. In the second, a similar tradeoff was explored between cost can the number of home bases used by the therapists.     

Does ethics improve stock market resilience in times of instability?

This paper compares the resilience of ethical (Islamic and socially responsible) indexes among five developed (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia) and three emerging markets (Brazil, India, South Africa) during the period following the 2008 subprime crisis. It relies on a multivariate CAPM-EGARCH model that accounts for sudden changes in volatility through the application of an iterated cumulative sums of squares (ICSS) algorithm on daily data over the sample period 2008–2014 to model time-varying volatility and ensure reliable estimates. The study confirms the lower systemic risk associated with Islamic indexes during the bearish period and reports that SRI, despite being more subject to systemic risk, offered higher alphas in highly integrated markets, while Islamic indexes performed better in less integrated ones. The evidence also reveals a very limited increase in the models’ predictability power from the integration of sudden changes in volatility into the EGARCH models during the full sample period. This limit is more marked during the bearish sub-period. Our findings have important implications for international investment and portfolio diversification perspectives in times of financial downturn.     

An assessment of the Bank of Canada's term PRA facility

This paper empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Bank of Canada's term Purchase and Resale Agreement (PRA) facility in reducing funding pressures, as measured by the CDOR-OIS spread. It examines the behaviour of this spread around both term PRA announcement dates and term PRA operation dates, using an event-study methodology to control for developments in other money markets as well as proxies for Canadian banking sector credit risk. Overall, there is robust evidence that the term PRA announcements reduced bank funding costs at both 1-month and 3-month terms, whereas we find no evidence of an impact from term PRA operations.     

Confronting chaos

While it is common to observe that our society and world are becoming increasingly complex and fast paced, most of our theories provide no bases upon which to develop appropriate strategies. The need for developing holistic strategies is becoming urgent in two related areas: major interactive technologies and morality. Jonathan King is Associate Professor of Management at the College of Business at Oregon State University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College (1965) and his M.B.A. in Finance (1975) and Ph.D. in Business, Government and Society (1980) from the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the areas of moral philosophy and General Systems Theory. His most important publications are The Three Faces of Thinking, Journal of Higher Education (1986) and Prisoner's Paradoxes, Journal of Business Ethics (1988).