The safety attitudes of people who use multi-purpose recreation facilities as a physical activity setting

Multi-purpose recreation facilities (MPRFs) are a popular setting for physical activity and it is therefore important that they are safe for all patrons. However, the attitudes of MPRF users towards safety are a potential barrier to the success of injury prevention programmes implemented within MPRFs. This article reports a survey of the safety attitudes of over 700 users of four indoor MPRFs. Factor analysis of 12 five-point Likert scale statements showed that the attitudes clustered around three major dimensions - the importance of safety, the benefits of safety and the perceptions of injury risk. Together, these three dimensions accounted for 49% of the variability in the attitudes. More than 85% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that: safety was an important aspect of physical activity participation; being injured affected enjoyment of physical activity; people should adopt appropriate safety measures for all physical activity; and individuals were responsible for their own safety. The MPRF users, particularly women and older people, were generally safety conscious, believed in adopting safety measures, and were willing to take responsibility for their own safety. Facility managers can be confident that if they provide evidence-based injury prevention interventions in these settings, then users will respond appropriately and adopt the promoted behaviours.     

Re‐Examining Advances in Occupational Licensing Research: Issues and Policy Implications

Much has changed in the realms of occupational licensing since BJIR last ran a special issue on the subject in 2010. The number of occupations subject to licensing has been growing, the data available to investigate the incidence and effects of licensing have improved immeasurably, and the policy environment surrounding licensing has changed. This issue reflects these changes with eight papers from North America and Europe covering the incidence of licensing, and its effects on wages, inequality, employment, quality of service provision and rent extraction by the organizations who undertake licensing.     

Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five European countries: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, are explored in a way that sheds light not just on those population flows but on the process of immigration generally. We draw on passenger manifests from immigrant ships for information on the individual migrants. Simulations, based partly on the these manifests, reveal that the costs of migration, borrowing constraints, concern for status, and country-specific taste preferences account for key immigrant characteristics, and help explain the large wage differentials that persisted despite Canada’s relatively open immigration policy.     

The Rise and Decline of Small‐Scale Sugarcane Production in South Africa: A Historical Perspective

South Africa's sugar industry has long been distinguished by its large number of small‐scale sugarcane growers (SSGs) farming on ‘communal’ land and its peculiar privately administered regulatory structure. In recent years, however, the numbers of small‐scale growers have declined precipitously. This paper argues that the relationship between the rise and fall of SSG production and the industry's governing regulatory structure is closer than usually appreciated. The emergence of SSG production in the late 1970s and the 1980s can be traced to industry‐subsidized initiatives, disguised as small‐scale credit, to bring commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production with strong miller oversight. From the late 1980s to 1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to subcontract support to farmers, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Although low rainfall is a central proximal factor in the rapid decline of the SSGs in the 2000s, their rapid increase was structurally fragile.     

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.     

The effects of open skies agreements on transatlantic air service levels

This paper examines the effects of Open Skies agreements on service levels in transatlantic aviation markets. Our route analysis reveals that Open Skies agreements between European countries and the US have resulted in both increases and decreases in service levels. Of the 22 European countries with US Open Skies agreements in place by 2007, only seven demonstrated increases in service levels while six showed reductions. Five countries saw no significant change and the remaining four have yet to receive direct transatlantic service, suggesting that liberalization alone does not lead to service level increases.     

A Markov switching analysis of contagion in the EMS

This paper applies the multivariate version of the Forbes and Rigobon (2002) contagion test, as proposed by Dungey et al. (2005a), to detect contagion effects in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). Crisis and non-crisis observations are determined endogenously via a Markov-switching vector autoregression (MSVAR). We show that the MSVAR is suitable for this purpose, as it does particularly well in identifying the 11 realignments of the ERM. We examine whether Denmark’s rejection of the Maastricht Treaty and Italy’s competitiveness problems affected other EMS participants and find evidence for contagion.     

Neoclassical vs evolutionary theories of financial constraints: Critique and prospectus

Empirical models based on neoclassical theory predict that if investment is sensitive to current financial performance, this is a sign that something is ‘wrong’ and is to be regarded as a problem worthy of a policy intervention. Evolutionary theory, however, refers to the principle of ‘growth of the fitter’ to interpret investment-cash flow sensitivities as the workings of a healthy economy. In particular, I attack the neoclassical assumption of rational profit-maximizing firms. Such an assumption is not a helpful starting point for empirical studies into firm growth. One caricature of neoclassical theory could be “Assume firms are perfectly efficient. Why aren’t they getting enough funding?”, whereas evolutionary theory considers that firms are heterogeneous and that not all firms should grow. This essay highlights how interpretations and policy interventions can be framed by the initial modelling assumptions, even though these latter are often chosen with analytical tractability in mind rather than realism.