FINANCING URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE: KNOWNS,UNKNOWNS, AND A WAY FORWARD

Improved urban infrastructure is widely believed to be essential in facilitating economic growth and in improving the lives of urban dwellers, both in developed and in developing countries. This paper focuses on several dimensions of urban infrastructure finance: finance for major infrastructure improvements in major economic centers, finance for expansion of basic municipal services in secondary cities and towns, and intergovernmental systems for financing investments with impacts beyond jurisdictional limits. It reviews what is “known” about current practices in these areas, using international evidence and case studies and summarizing international best practices. It also indicates areas in which knowledge gaps remain. Despite these “unknowns,” there are avenues by which our understanding of infrastructure schemes can be enhanced, and some suggestions for a research agenda on financing urban infrastructure are offered in the concluding section.     

Central bank haircut policy

We present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral. Setting a haircut therefore involves balancing the trade-off between relaxing the liquidity constraints of agents on one hand, and increasing potential inflation risk and distorting the portfolio choices of agents on the other. We argue that the optimal haircut is higher when the central bank is unable to lend exclusively to agents who actually need liquidity. Finally, for a temporary surprise drop in the haircut, the central bank can be more aggressive than when setting a permanent level of the haircut.     

British union renewal: does salvation really lie beyond the workplace?

The paper examines a union initiative to recruit among migrant workers through the provision of individual services outside of the workplace. While the initiative is shown to have initially generated new members, questions are raised about the viability of such an approach in the absence of mutually supportive access to workplace representation.     

Financial Education Interventions Targeting Immigrants and Children of Immigrants: Results from a Randomized Control Trial

We document that immigrants in the United States differ from natives in several aspects relevant for their financial decision making. Based on these differences, we designed novel financial education materials targeted at US immigrants and their children and evaluated their effectiveness using a randomized control trial. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first rigorous evaluation of financial education programs targeted at this population. Compared to a control group, the groups that received the one‐time educational intervention were more likely to correctly answer financial knowledge questions immediately after the intervention. The estimated effects of this one‐time intervention on knowledge were large, but most of them faded away after six months. Moreover, we find little effect of the treatments on intended financial behavior measures, both immediately and six months later. Our results point to the efficacy of this type of educational material in informing immigrants and their children about important financial information that they are unfamiliar with, including information related to their immigrant status. However, they also suggest that a priority for future research should be to test whether repeated opportunities for learning can increase financial knowledge retention and lead to behavior change.     

Going Native: Effects of Disclosure Position and Language on the Recognition and Evaluation of Online Native Advertising

Despite recent industry attention, questions remain about how native advertising is perceived and processed by consumers. Two experiments examined effects of language and positioning in native advertising disclosures on recognition of the content as advertising, effects of recognition on brand and publisher evaluations, and whether disclosure position affects visual attention. Findings show that middle or bottom positioning and wording using “advertising” or “sponsored” increased advertising recognition compared to other conditions, and ad recognition generally led to more negative evaluations. Visual attention mediated the relationship between disclosure position and advertising recognition. Theoretical, practical, and regulatory implications for disclosures in native advertising are discussed.     

From ‘just a swimmer’ to a ‘swimming mother’: women’s embodied experiences of recreational aquatic activity with pre-school children

Increased academic attention on the gendering of leisure pastimes in recent years has highlighted the centrality of the gendered body in influencing how leisure is accessed, experienced and transformed. To date, however, little attention has been paid to how women experience aquatic leisure activity, the second most popular form of leisure activity in the UK, and where female participation predominates. This paper presents results from research investigating the aquatic leisure experiences of 22 women, with children aged under 3, in the North-East of England. A number of key themes emerged from the data, which highlighted the centrality of the gendered, lived body as a key social construct contouring participant perceptions in the swimming pool environment. Women reflected upon their self-perceived physical deficiencies when wearing revealing swimming costumes, particularly under the critical gaze of ‘other’ bodies, whether present or imagined. The co-presence of other bodies was also central in shaping lived experiences, and the presence of ‘dependent’ children’s bodies shifted bodily intentionality away from the self towards perceived maternal responsibilities and the management of perceived risks, including ‘dirt’ and ‘germs’ and the negotiation of the tacit rules of the swimming pool. Results also suggest that the emphasis on maternal responsibility in aquatic leisure activity and timing of parent-toddler sessions could lead to reproduction of gender inequalities and the exclusion of some fathers from participation.     

A number‐of‐modes reference rule for density estimation under multimodality

We consider kernel density estimation for univariate distributions. The question of interest is as follows: given that the data analyst has some background knowledge on the modality of the data (for instance, ‘data of this type are usually bimodal’), what is the adequate bandwidth to choose? We answer this question by extending Silverman's idea of ‘normal‐reference’ to that of ‘reference to a Gaussian mixture’. The concept is illustrated in the light of real data examples.     

Internationalizing audit education

Audit education is typically offered only to accounting majors. We argue that auditing provides a way of thinking that could serve as a framework for an accounting curriculam. We describe two parts of a course content that could be incorporated into an existing auditing course or a begining accounting course. The first section emphasizes accountability; the second emphasizes the role of the auditor in the accountability process. The concepts are best taught within an international paradigm that permits examination of various institutional environments.     

Leisure in Living Local through Food and Farming

This article reflects on aligning leisure research with the local foods movement while placing the local foods movement into the larger framework of sustainability and the fields of leisure and recreation. The local foods movement has persisted during difficult economic times; growth in local foods venues and young people endeavoring to establish small-scale sustainable farms continues to flourish. Given the history of leisure research and its continued success alleviating participation barriers and constraints, the need for leisure researchers to focus on local food systems is imperative and timely. This essay highlights the notion of leisure in living through local foods and the serious leisure aspects of small-scale sustainable agriculture. This article also encourages leisure researchers to explore and assess the relationships between the local foods movement and small-scale farming as embedded in the larger framework of sustainability.