Promoting passenger comfort and wellbeing in the air: An examination of the in-flight health advice provided by international airlines

Cases of airline passengers developing deep vein thromboses and contracting infectious diseases during flights have led to airlines' provision of in-flight customer health advice coming under increased scrutiny. By means of a manifest content analysis of the information provided in 50 international airlines’ in-flight magazines, this paper examines the nature and presentation of the health advice that is supplied and comments on the different approaches individual airlines adopt.     

Contesting rural recreation: the battle over access to Windermere

Different forms of recreation are competing increasingly for space to operate, and arbitrating between these competing claims can be fraught with difficulties. This paper examines the recent conflict over attempts to impose a speed limit, and hence prevent power boating and associated activities, on Windermere in the English Lake District. The competing arguments, as presented to a public inquiry, are assessed in the light of the Inspector's verdict on these issues, and the political responses to the verdict. The case is likely to have a much wider significance in terms of land use planning policy in Britain, both in National Parks and rural areas more generally.     

Spatial Economic Analysis in Data‐Rich Environments

Controlling for spatial effects in micro‐level studies of consumer and producer behaviour necessitates a range of analytical modifications. These range from modest changes in data collection and the definition of variables to dramatic changes in the modelling of consumer and producer decision‐making. This paper discusses conceptual, empirical and data issues involved in modelling the spatial aspects of economic behaviour in data‐rich environments. Attention is given to established and emerging agricultural economic applications of spatial data and spatial econometric methods at the micro‐scale. Recent applications of individual and household data are featured, including models of land‐use change at the urban–rural interface, agricultural land values, and technological change and technology adoption.     

Inflation,Translation and Conflicts in Statements of Financial Accounting Standards*

This paper utilizes the concept of aggregative consistency defined in Rubinstein and Fishburn [1986], and the FASB's concept of representational faithfulness to evaluate foreign currency translation and accounting for changing prices as embodied in SFAS 70. The paper shows that SFAS 70 produces measurement errors and creates a foreign currency translation adjustment which does not reflect the effects of exchange rate changes. The conditions defined in the paper also facilitate an evaluation of the relative merits of restate/translate and translate/restate. Restate/translate can conceivably be used if there is no consolidation. In the more usual case where consolidation is required, translate/restate using the relevant shareholders' consumption index will yield aggregatively consistent values under fewer restrictive conditions.     

Dealing with Clinical Risk: Implications of the Rise of Evidence-Based Health Care

This article considers the nature of risk in health care and the use the National Health Service (NHS) makes of risk management. It explores how the concept of risk has been challenged by the rise of 'evidence-based' health care, accompanied and accelerated by a decline in professional prestige, status and mystique and much greater use of external measurement and controls as part of the New Public Management. The nature of evidence-based health care is outlined and the implications of the use of guidelines and other practice aids are explored. Finally, the article discusses how evidence-based health care is affecting our views of clinical risk.     

Taming the City? Ideas,Structural Power and the Evolution of British Banking Policy Amidst the Great Financial Meltdown

We are increasingly learning more about the contingencies and independent variables that shape the structural power of business and financial interests. This paper contributes to this research by analysing factors that led to weakening in the structural power of financial interests in the City of London in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis. We focus on under-researched mediators of structural power dynamics, especially the context of action and the agency and ideas of state leaders. Prior to the crisis, closed regulatory policy and a prevailing discourse premised upon the notion of market efficiency, helped to reinforce the structural power of the UK banking and financial sector. After the crisis heightened politicisation, more assertive state leadership, and especially ideational revision, has increasingly challenged the power of the City. We illustrate this through an examination of the Independent Commission on Banking's proposals in relation to the ‘ring fencing’ of investment and retail banks.