Effective teaching,student engagement and student satisfaction during the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from business students' qualitative survey evaluations

We investigate the influence of unanticipated prolonged disruption on effective teaching, student engagement and student satisfaction during campus lockdown due to COVID-19. Qualitative comments provided by undergraduate business students in the university end-of-semester survey were analysed using a variety of methods, including sentiment analysis. Our findings indicate that effective teaching through the characteristics of the instructor, can lead to enhanced student engagement and higher levels of student satisfaction in an emergency remote teaching environment. Our findings highlight the critical role of the instructor in providing cognitive and affective support to students, along with clear communication, during times of substantial change.     

Firm culture and internal control system

The corporate culture within firms is a significant concern for regulators, shareholders and other stakeholders. Drawing on a large sample of US firms, we use the political preferences of the top management team (TMT) to proxy for a firm's culture and examine whether it influences the decision to implement an effective internal control system (ICS) and whether the ICS plays a mediating role between the culture created by the TMT and financial reporting quality. We find that a Republican-leaning TMT with a more conservative ideology is associated with a more effective internal control system. In addition, the TMT's political preferences affect financial reporting quality, both directly and indirectly, via the internal control system. A range of robustness tests reinforces our main findings.     

The monetary policy strategy of the Bank of England in 2020–21: An assessment

Excessive money creation during the Covid pandemic has resulted in Britain's worst episode of inflation since 1990–91. The backdrop to this failure of monetary policy is the Bank of England's aggregate demand/aggregate supply framework together with the Monetary Policy Committee's neglect of broad money. An alternative way to operate monetary policy is urgently needed. A significantly improved monetary policy outcome could be achieved by shifting from trying to steer the economy using interest rates and quantitative easing or quantitative tightening to reliance on the relative stability of income velocity (the ratio of nominal GDP to broad money) as a means of managing aggregate demand.     

Is it time to reboot welfare economics? Overview

The contributions of economists have long included both positive explanations of how economic systems work and normative recommendations for how they could and should work better. In recent decades, economics has taken a strong empirical turn as well as having a greater appreciation of the importance of the complexities of real-world human behaviour, institutions, the strengths and failures of markets, and interlinkages with other systems, including politics, technology, culture and the environment. This shift has also brought greater relevance and pragmatism to normative economics. While this shift towards evidence and pragmatism has been welcome, it does not in itself answer the core question of what exactly constitutes ‘better’, and for whom, and how to manage inevitable conflicts and trade-offs in society. These have long been the core concerns of welfare economics. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, debates on welfare economics seemed to have become marginalised. The articles in this Fiscal Studies symposium engage with the question of how to revive normative questions as a central issue in economic scholarship.     

Community development using a sustainable tourism strategy: a case study of the Jordan River Valley touristway

This paper presents the results of a 10‐year collaboration among Yarmouk University, the University of Arkansas and the Jordanian government to develop a sustainable tourism strategy against the backdrop of political and economic uncertainty. It reports our efforts to develop a touristway through the Jordan River Valley that integrates the valley's heritage, archeology, and Christian and Islamic religious sites. It also analyses our community development work in Umm Qais, the touristway's northern anchor, and how our plan contributes to Northern Jordan's economic development. We conclude with a discussion of the specific insights gained from our experiences that may serve others addressing similar issues. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.