Grazing into the future: Policy making for South African communal rangelands

This article reports on a symposium held at Fort Hare University in July 1998. Its objective was to assess the current state of knowledge on communal rangelands and identify issues important for policy making. This was done in the light of concerns about recent policy reform. Uncontrolled access to resources and the lack of services were identified as the main constraints on socio‐economic development in the communal rangelands, and inadequate forage during the dry season was recognised as a general constraint on livestock production, irrespective of mean annual rainfall. Government policies must recognise these issues and the social and ecological heterogeneity of communal rangelands in South Africa. The conclusion with the most far‐reaching implications, however, was that degradation has occurred in some, but not all, communal rangelands and is most likely to occur in arid areas. This finding is in direct contrast to the current base for agricultural policies in South Africa, which assumes that livestock have little impact on rangelands.     

Cost-effectiveness analysis of sequential biologic therapy with ixekizumab versus secukinumab as first-line treatment of moderate-to-severe psoriasis in the UK

Aims: Patients with psoriasis often undergo treatment with a sequence of biologic agents because of poor/loss of response to initial therapy. With the availability of newer agents like ixekizumab and secukinumab, there is a need for cost-effectiveness analyses to better reflect current clinical practice. This study aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of a sequence of biologic therapies containing first-line ixekizumab vs first-line secukinumab in patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in the UK.

Materials and methods: A Markov model with a lifetime horizon was developed to compare the cost-effectiveness of ixekizumab and secukinumab treatment sequences: ixekizumab → ustekinumab → infliximab → best supportive care (BSC) vs secukinumab → ustekinumab → infliximab → BSC. The model used monthly cycles, and included four health states: trial period, treatment maintenance, BSC, and death. At the end of the trial period, responders transitioned to maintenance therapy; non-responders transitioned to the next biologic in the sequence. An annual discontinuation rate of 20% was assumed for maintenance therapy.

Results: The ixekizumab sequence provided cost savings of £898 (£176,203 vs 177,101) [year 2015 values] and gained 0.03 more quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs: 1.45 vs 1.42) vs the secukinumab sequence over the lifetime horizon. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed an 89.8% likelihood that the ixekizumab sequence would be cost-effective at a threshold of £20,000 per QALY gained.

Limitations: The analysis used list prices for drugs rather than confidential, preferentially priced Patient Access Scheme costs. In addition, efficacy input data were based on a network meta-analysis, as there were no head-to-head trials comparing ixekizumab and secukinumab.

Conclusion: First-line treatment with ixekizumab as part of a specific sequential biologic therapy for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in the UK provided slight advantages in cost savings and QALYs gained over a similar treatment sequence initiated with secukinumab. In view of the small magnitude of these differences, factors such as patient preferences (e.g. for number of injections) and long-term safety (e.g. related to time on the market) may also be important for clinical decision-making.     

Tourists’ aesthetic assessment of environmental changes,linking conservation planning to sustainable tourism development

Abstract

Tourists often travel to experience the natural beauty of a destination such as the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia. This nature-based destination attracts millions of tourists every year because of its outstanding underwater aesthetics. Recently, parts of the GBR have been degraded by warming sea temperatures and other local anthropogenic influences, threatening the Reef aesthetics and tourism in the region. In order to deal with this topical issue, the current research investigates tourists’ aesthetic assessment of environmental changes in the GBR ecosystem. Research outcomes indicate that tourists’ perceived beauty of the Reef is sensitive to environmental changes. The disappearance of sea animals (colourful fish, turtle), degrading coral and decreasing water quality negatively influence their aesthetic assessment, which can reduce tourist visitation in the long-term. Hence, sustainable tourism development in the GBR regions can only be achieved when government support for environmental management is strengthened. Conservation programs of the GBR should expand beyond coral restoration for controlling water quality, reducing pollution and protecting aesthetically appealing sea animals.     

On the valuation of fader and discrete barrier options in Heston's stochastic volatility model

We focus on closed-form option pricing in Heston's stochastic volatility model, where closed-form formulas exist only for a few option types. Most of these closed-form solutions are constructed from characteristic functions. We follow this closed-form approach and derive multivariate characteristic functions depending on at least two spot values for different points in time. The derived characteristic functions are used as building blocks to set up (semi-) analytical pricing formulas for exotic options with payoffs depending on finitely many spot values such as fader options and discretely monitored barrier options. We compare our result with different numerical methods and examine the computational accuracy.     

Children between the age of 5 and 11: what “don’t know” answers tell us

Children are increasingly seen as competent informants on their activities, views and needs. Different abilities of children can lead to inadequate (formally or regarding the content) answers or to the misunderstanding of proceedings during an interview process. One inadequate or at least unintended (on the part of the researcher) response is a “don’t know” answer (DK). To study when and why DK answers occur, a possible cause for them in the cognitive process and their relation to age, we analysed the DK answers given in qualitative semi-structured interviews with children aged 5–11, conducted face-to-face and on the telephone. Each of 56 children was interviewed twice, once face-to-face and once via telephone. The results show that age had an effect on DK responses due to the cognitive state of the respondent and their communicative intent, but there was no difference in the number of DKs due to problems with the research instrument or due to an adequacy judgement in respect of respondent age.     

Humanising Business Through Ethical Labelling: Progress and Paradoxes in the UK

Labelling schemes are practical arrangements aimed at making ‘ethical’ products widely available and visible. They are crucial to expanded development of ethical markets and hence to the addition of moral dimensions to the normally amoral behaviour linking consumers and retail and production businesses. The study reported here attempts to assess the contribution of UK ethical, social and environmental certification and labelling initiatives to ‘sustainable’ consumption and production. The research sought to assess the overall potential of initiatives to inject human values into the supply-distribution chains, through a qualitative survey of 15 of the 26 main UK initiatives: in social justice, animal welfare and environmental sustainability from the agriculture, food processing, timber, aquaculture, textiles and personal care sectors. By analysing the basic characteristics and concepts of these labels and investigating the emergence of labelling initiatives, we assess whether labels help add an ethical dimension, or whether, in some respects, they also reduce such missions to the technical management of adding only another ‘utility’ to a product. The analysis assesses whether the gradual ‘mainstreaming’ of ethical initiatives such as ‘Fairtrade’ risks subsuming ethical goals within business participants’ competitive and profit-oriented logics. However, the contrasting perspectives revealed between rival labelling initiatives show that the scope and functions of labelling projects go beyond the manifest ones of information communication between consumers and producer and actually introduce elements of socio-political regulation. These are essential for more sustainable and ethical business practices and are an integral part of any humanisation of business involvement.     

What and How Long Does It Take to Get Tenure? The Case of Economics and Business Administration in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

Abstract. This paper investigates the determinants of tenure decisions in Germany, Austria and the German‐speaking part of Switzerland for professorships in economics, business administration and related fields. Our dataset comprises candidates who were awarded tenure as well as those who were eligible but were not tenured. We show that business candidates have a higher probability of being tenured than economists. Youth, marital status and publications matter; gender and children do not. The market for first appointments in economics relies much more on publication performance than the market for business administration.     

Tourism and developing countries

The expansion of the tourist industry in developing countries is seen by both the countries themselves and international development organisations as a promising route towards boosting economic development. However, once the benefits and costs to society have been carefully weighed up this route appears very problematic in many cases.