Does Aid Cause Trade? Evidence from an Asymmetric Gravity Model

Anderson and vanWincoop developed what has become the standard framework for framing and interpreting empirical work using the gravity model. Their framework relies heavily on an assumption of symmetry among countries. For issues related to North‐South trade, this assumption is problematic. In this paper, we develop an asymmetric extension of the Anderson–vanWincoop framework appropriate to the analysis of North‐South trade, where Northern countries produce differentiated goods and Southern countries homogenous ones. In addition, we use an appropriately extended version of Baier and Bergtrand and Taylor linear expansion – thus permitting its estimation using (good old) OLS. The result is an empirical model that (i) is better suited to the analysis of North‐South trade, (ii) is easy to estimate and compute comparative statics, not requiring a customised NLS routine and, given the way the South is included, (iii) provides a simple explanation of zero trade flows between some country pairs, a fact still not fully explained in the literature. As an illustration of its use, we examine the empirical link between foreign aid and trade.     

Airports in their urban settings: towards a conceptual model of interfaces in the Australian context

In Australia, airports have emerged as important sub-regional activity centres and now pose challenges for both airport operation and planning in the surrounding urban and regional environment. The changing nature of airports in their metropolitan context and the emergence of new pressures and problems require the introduction of a fresh conceptual framework to assist the better understanding of these complex roles and spatial interactions. The approach draws upon the meta-concept of interfaces of an ‘airport metropolis’ as an organising device consisting of four main domains: economic development, land use, infrastructure, and governance. The paper uses the framework to further discuss airport and regional interactions and highlights the use of sustainability criteria to operationalise the model. The approach aims to move research and practice beyond the traditionally compartmentalised analysis of airport issues and policy-making by highlighting interdependencies between airports and regions.     

An Academic Publisher’s Response to Plagiarism

Plagiarism strikes at the heart of academe, eroding the fundamental value of academic research. Recent evidence suggests that acts of plagiarism and awareness of these acts are on the rise in academia. To address this issue, a vein of research has emerged in recent years exploring plagiarism as an area of academic inquiry. In this new academic subject, case studies and analysis have been one of the most influential methodologies employed. Case studies provide a venue where acts of plagiarism can be discussed and analyzed in a constructive manner, and that is the primary purpose of this article. Unlike previous studies, however, we focus on the role of the publisher, a key player in dealing with acts of plagiarism, but one who has received little attention in the academic literature. Specifically, we examine how an academic publisher addressed allegations of plagiarism and how the publisher’s decision-making affected the outcome. We analyze the case by applying the guidelines from different frameworks and ethical theory and develop recommendations from the lessons evidenced, the second main objective of our article. This analysis advances the dialog on academic plagiarism by exploring the role of the publisher from a deontological perspective of ethical absolutism.     

Auditing Goodwill in the Post‐Amortization Era: Challenges for Auditors

The elimination of goodwill amortization in 2001 brought about significant change in how companies are required to account for goodwill. This change in accounting also brought with it new challenges for auditors, namely evaluating the reasonableness of management's assumptions related to goodwill valuation. In addition to introducing technical challenges, this task is particularly difficult given the misalignment in incentives it creates between managers who likely prefer to avoid recording an impairment and auditors who seek to minimize the bias in management's impairment testing. This study focuses on the consequences of the misaligned incentives that auditors face under the current goodwill assessment process. We find that the decision to record a goodwill impairment is associated with an increase in the probability of auditor dismissal. Consistent with the presence of significant friction with clients, our results also indicate that the likelihood of auditor dismissals is negatively related to the favorability of the impairment decision. Furthermore, we find that companies impairing goodwill prior to dismissing auditors subsequently employ auditors that are, on average, more favorable to clients in their impairment decisions.     

The 'Parent Shift' program: incentives for nurses, rewards for nursing teams

To create new opportunities for nurses to reenter the workforce, a RN p.r.n. program must meet the needs of nurses who wish to make dual commitments to home and work. The Parent Shift program provides an innovative model of attracting and retaining nurses in a hospital workforce. Many nurses who joined the program were away from the field of nursing for many years and were drawn to the program because of the promise of flexible shifts and minimal requirements for participation. In this study, flexible shifts not only encouraged program entry, they were also a powerful motivator for continued program participation over time. Parent Shift nurse presence was perceived by nurse managers to decrease stressors and improve time efficiency of full-shift staff.     

Clothing as an environment for older adults' successful ageing

This research tested a conceptual model for proximity of clothing to self (PCS) in relation to age identity, self‐actualization, psychological well‐being, self‐assessed health, sex and chronological age among older adults, aged 65 and over, within the human ecological perspective. A mail survey was sent to a national random sample of 1700 older adults in the US resulting in 195 usable respondents in the final sample. The respondents returned two completed questionnaires, which were (1) Clothing: A Resource for Successful Aging? (to measure PCS, age identity and demographic variables) and (2) Personal Orientation Inventory (to measure self‐actualization). The results indicated that older adults' psychological well‐being, one component of successful ageing, was directly affected by their self‐assessed health, age identity and self‐actualization. PCS indirectly influenced individuals' psychological well‐being in a slightly negative way in later life. In sum, clothing may be used as a needs satisfier for different levels of needs or related more closely with needs in addition to self‐actualization needs for older adults. Further research should be conducted to explore relationships among PCS, different levels of human needs, clothing‐related variables and psychological well‐being for this age group. In practice, the effort should be given to teach the use of clothing (or other human‐built objects) as a tool or need satisfier to contribute to success in a person's later life by offering some educational or training programmes through local senior community centres or universities.     

What every nurse executive should know about staffing and scheduling technology initiatives

Staffing in hospitals has a history of being based in opinion and tradition, not evidence. In recent years, for many, staffing practices have spun out of control creating chaos in overtime, the use of incentives, entitlement behaviors, dissatisfaction and frustration among nurses, and has opened doors for such things as staffing ratio legislation. Unprecedented pressures around budgets and financial performance have no doubt compounded this situation. We are in a new day, where technology can help us more than ever in a move towards staffing excellence and staffing practices based on evidence. Highly successful implementations of new technologies are the result of good leadership. The effectiveness of staffing and scheduling has significant business, safety, and quality implications that sit at the heart of the nurse executive's role.     

'The environment matters' and 'designing toward the whole'

A nurse/health care executive/architecture specialist and an artist/designer offer insights to creating environments that effectively support the delivery of care, the wellbeing of patients and their families, and the well-being of the health care workforce. The care environment is more than bricks, mortar, doors, windows, walls, and flooring. It is a sanctuary where healing can take place, where the spirit can be released, and where the provision of care, often fairly intimate, can happen through the connection between patient and care providers. Evidence-based design has brought forth the kind of inquiry and solutions that begin to address what an environment for healing requires. The interaction of built environment, staff, patients, families, and doctors is an overlapping ebb and flow that relies at its heart on the ability to hold all the parts as having equal priority.     

Illustrating the importance of Austrian business cycle theory: A reply to Murphy,Barnett, and Block; A call for quantitative study

Murphy et al. (2009) criticize Young’s (2005) test of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) using US industry-level quarterly job reallocation data and the federal funds rate as a monetary policy indicator. I argue that not only are Murphy et al.’s specific criticisms misguided; more importantly, they all but completely rule out the type of empirical study that Young (2005) advocates: specifically, one that (1) is quantitative and distinguishes between statistical and economic significance and (2) attempts to exploit a hypothesis that is both a prediction of ABCT and not a prediction of competing monetary theories of the cycle. I argue that empirical studies embodying (1) and (2) are critical to ABCT as a research program. Furthermore, I review the existing econometric studies of ABCT from the last 10 years and conclude that there is much room for improvement along these lines.