Hospitals and philanthropy as partners in funding nursing education

The current nursing shortage is complex and varies widely across the country, and remedial approaches lack adequate funding from the federal government. Lasting remedies must originate from new and different partnerships between multiple institutions with complementary missions in these markets. Hospitals as major nurse employers and foundations that leverage critical sources of financing have a vital role in partnerships. Together they promote and require new entrepreneurial skills, innovative educational strategies, and greater accountability in meeting area workforce needs.     

Considering Technical and Allocative Efficiency in the Inverse Farm Size–Productivity Relationship

In the leading explanations for the oft‐observed inverse relationship (IR) between farm size and productivity in developing country agriculture, labour market imperfections have commonly occupied a central role. However, an emerging literature suggests that disparities in technical or allocative efficiency may be driving productivity differentials. Using nationally‐representative panel data from Nicaragua, we develop and employ a four‐stage empirical framework to simultaneously test the competing explanations for the IR. While efficiency differences exert a significant impact on all productivity indicators, their explanatory power is insufficient to rule out labour market imperfections as the driving force behind the relationship.     

Estimation and inference under economic restrictions

Estimation of economic relationships often requires imposition of constraints such as positivity or monotonicity on each observation. Methods to impose such constraints, however, vary depending upon the estimation technique employed. We describe a general methodology to impose (observation-specific) constraints for the class of linear regression estimators using a method known as constraint weighted bootstrapping. While this method has received attention in the nonparametric regression literature, we show how it can be applied for both parametric and nonparametric estimators. A benefit of this method is that imposing numerous constraints simultaneously can be performed seamlessly. We apply this method to Norwegian dairy farm data to estimate both unconstrained and constrained parametric and nonparametric models.     

Integrated beach resorts,informal tourism commerce and the 2004 tsunami: Laguna Phuket in Thailand

Issues of importance related to informal tourism commerce are explored in this paper with particular reference to the case of Laguna Phuket, an integrated beach resort in Thailand. The extent and nature of informal trade at the destination is analysed before and after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, based upon data collected during fieldwork. The sector is shown to display distinctive qualities, including resilience in the face of a natural disaster, and to have a role in purpose‐built as well as conventional resorts. Its relationship with the formal tourism industry is also discussed and this emerges as close, yet with potential for both conflict and cooperation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.