Teachers’ unions and industrial action in South African primary schools: Exploring their impacts on learning

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates a disruption hypothesis that student learning is lost as a direct consequence of teacher strike action in South Africa. At face value estimates from a within-student across-subject analysis suggest that teacher strike participation negatively affects learning for students in the poorest three quarters of schools. Strike action also limits access to nutrition as school closures prevent student participation in daily school feeding programmes. However, despite controlling for student and school level factors that may drive teacher selection into strike participation, unobserved teacher characteristics continue to bias estimates. Assuming that selection on observable characteristics can tell us something about selection on unobservable characteristics, there is an implied negative selection of teachers into strike participation.     

The intercultural communication motivation scale: An instrument to assess motivational training needs of candidates for international assignments

The Intercultural Communication Motivation Scale (ICMS) is a tool to assess the intercultural communication motivation of candidates for international assignments. The ICMS performed well in four studies conducted with undergraduate students in New Zealand, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany. Generally showing a stable fi ve‐factor structure, high test‐retest correlations, very high Cronbach's alphas, and almost no social desirability bias in self and peer evaluations, the ICMS is sensitive enough to detect test‐retest differences. Thus, socially responsible strategic international HR programs can use this scale to reliably evaluate employees and their families for specifi c international locations. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Behavioral Finance in Brazil: A Bibliometric Study from 2007 to 2017

This article analyzed 58 Brazilian journals in order to address the gap unexplored in the past 10?years by congresses and periodical journals. In this research, an analysis based on keywords was used, followed by analysis of citations and co-citations that allowed to verify: an average growth of 20% p.a. of publications; the most common focus was replication of Kahneman and Tversky; the most studied group tended to be university students; quality has failed to accompany the increase in publications; public institutions publish more. A gap was perceived in the surveying of financial managers and investors, as well as bias and heuristics as a subject.     

Road pricing

Summary Among the main problems in the public sector of the economy are those of road congestion on the one hand and under-utilisation of roads on the other. Partly this is a consequence of inefficient price policies for the use of roads. But road pricing involves many technical and distributional problems. A preliminary survey of the effects suggests that quite simple road pricing systems, such as a differentiated urban rural license fee, may be a most efficient way of introducing road pricing. Tolls on critical access points may be another efficient way of introducing congestion charges. At the same time it is important to attempt to reduce charges on uncongested roads, and this is especially necessary for developing countries. A preliminary survey of the effects of such a rearrangement of road taxation suggest that there would be no marked redistributional effects. But much more work is required on this aspect of road pricing. Adviser on Research, Graduate Centre for Management Studies. This paper was written in 1967 during a period as Visiting Professor at M.I.T., with some special reference to conditions in the United States.     

Consumer responses to characteristics of price-matching guarantees: The moderating role of price consciousness

The present study develops and tests a conceptual model of consumer response to different types of price-matching characteristics (i.e., refund depth, length, and scope) across consumer segments with varying levels of price consciousness. A computer shopping simulation results show that a deep refund is interpreted as a signal of low prices by nonprice conscious consumers. However, price conscious consumers are found to associate deep refunds with increased prices, an unintended outcome for the retailer. The effects of price-matching characteristics on search and purchase behavior were also found to vary across more and less price conscious consumer segments.     

Individual voluntary arrangements: A ‘fresh start’ for salaried consumer debtors in England and Wales

Since the mid‐1990s the number of consumer insolvencies in England and Wales has grown exponentially. The UK's Insolvency Act 1986 offers two formal responses to personal insolvency: bankruptcy and individual voluntary arrangements (‘IVAs’). While consumers have used both these debt relief mechanisms in increasing numbers in recent years, IVAs—regulated agreements between debtors and creditors facilitated by a licensed insolvency practitioner, usually taking the form of a 5‐year payment plan—grew faster than bankruptcies between 2003 and 2006. However, the level of new IVA approvals fell back in 2007 and the first half of 2008. This article charts the transformation of the IVA from a bankruptcy alternative originally designed for insolvent traders and professionals into a tool of consumer debt relief. It then seeks to explain both the stellar rise in IVA usage among consumer debtors and the subsequent stalling of IVA growth. The rise of consumer IVAs can be attributed largely to supply side changes in the market for debt resolution—in particular the emergence of volume providers commonly referred to as ‘IVA factories’—while a sustained backlash against the procedure and the providers instigated by institutional creditors demanding higher recoveries accounts for the subsequent decline in approvals. The article concludes by considering the near‐term prospects for consumer IVAs within the context of the increasingly complex UK debt resolution market. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing agricultural trade policies options with the European Union: a Brazilian perspective

Brazil has shown interest in agricultural trade negotiations at bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels. This study addresses several important negotiations, using the agricultural sector model CAPRI (Common Agricultural Policy Regional Impact Analysis), to analyze liberalization scenarios between the European Union and the Mercosur countries focusing particularly on their impacts in Brazil. Four possible agreements between Europe and Mercosur are simulated, including a broader multilateral agreement proposed in the G20. The results suggest that a bilateral scenario involving larger tariff rate quota increase, as called for by Mercosur, generates larger gains than accepting the European Union proposal of 2004 or further multilateral trade liberalization based on the G20 proposal. However, much larger increases in tariff rate quotas for all products are not necessarily justified in all cases. Moreover, Brazil's production and export potential is limited by factors other than trade restrictions.     

Impacts of terrain attributes on economics and the environment: costs of reducing potential nitrogen pollution in wheat production

The economic cost of achieving desired environmental outcomes from uniform and variable rate fertilizer application technologies depends both on market forces and agronomic properties. Using spatial econometric methods, we analyze the impact of nitrogen fertilizer supply by terrain attribute on the yield and protein content of hard red spring wheat grown in Eastern Washington as well as the impact on residual nitrogen. We find significant association with all three. The economic impact of nitrogen restrictions depends critically on both prices and level of the restriction. Uniform application of nitrogen was found to economically outperform variable rate application, but variable rate application provided positive environmental benefits due to less residual nitrogen.     

Attention All Shoppers,Queer Customers in Aisle Two: Investigating Lesbian and Gay Discrimination in the Marketplace

In this paper, drawing on epistemologies in social and behavioral sciences, we discuss the tenuous social-cultural climate of sexual minorities within markets. Discourses across disciplines address the socio-political and cultural evolution of sexual minorities, most notably self-identified and out lesbians and gay men. Yet, consumptive and marketing spheres offer mixed metaphors about the value and desirability of lesbians and gays, and often work to enact the homophobic at an institutional level. We review research on homonegative bias and heteronormativity within psychological and sociological domains, and then illustrate how homonegativity toward perceived lesbians and gays is structurally enacted within the marketplace. We posit four methodological strategies that may be used to further research queries in these domains, and comment on the ethical parameters of using deception to investigate discriminatory behavior against (perceived) lesbians and gay men.