道歉的小字条

尚莫和胡克又吵架了。 这一次，大度的胡克不再让步，转身就往家走，留下火爆睥气的尚莫独自赴宴。 晚上11时，尚莫尽兴而归。开门时．她看到门上贴着一张纸条：“你必须向我道歉!…‘没门!”尚莫一把扯下字条。     

The self-reinforcing dynamics of economic insecurity and obesity

This article models the dynamic effects of economic insecurity on body weight. Using Australian panel data, we infer an individual’s level of economic insecurity as a function of exposure to various financial risks and employ regression equations to explore its effect upon current period body mass index (BMI) scores. Estimates reveal that a sustained standard deviation increase in economic insecurity raises an individual’s BMI at a rate of approximately 0.35 units per year. Quantile regressions are then used to estimate the sensitivity of body weight to insecurity at different percentiles of the distribution and we find that persons who are overweight and obese are much more seriously affected. This implies that shocks that make individuals more financially vulnerable can generate harmful self-sustaining cycles of risk and weight gain. We also model the dynamics of insecurity and show that it is a persistent phenomenon for persons with high levels of exposure and lower incomes. This finding indicates that persons of lower socio-economic status are more likely to encounter vicious cycles of increasing insecurity and obesity, which partially explains why weight-related health problems are unusually highly concentrated amongst these individuals.     

Small business education and training in Transkei

The objectives of this survey, which was conducted among two groups of respondents, namely urban small business persons and providers of small business education and training, were to: - determine the availability and adequacy of small business education and training

- identify the main gaps and deficiencies in such training

- formulate proposals and recommendations to remedy the deficiencies and gaps.

Two different questionnaires were developed and used to collect data from 121 small business persons and 3 institutions concerned with small business education and training in Transkei.

An analysis of the data revealed that although training is being conducted, a great deal needs to be done in order to meet the training needs of the small business community. Education programmes are not being developed to enable small business people to cope with the problems of managing their businesses.     

Johannesburg's strategic plan for municipal service partnerships

While many local authorities have been slow to make the transition from traditional methods of service delivery to internationally proven alternative approaches, this is not the case for the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, which is pioneering initiatives around municipal service partnerships (MSPs) in many different areas. This article traces the processes embarked upon by Johannesburg, with a view to examining how and why the private sector became involved in municipal service provision. Given that Johannesburg is the largest and perhaps the most important city in the country, it is expected that the lessons learned from the experiments with MSPs there will be profoundly important for similar efforts by local governments in other parts of the country.     

The Creative Night-Time Leisure Economy of Informal Drinking Venues

In response to debates on emergent and rogue forms of urbanism that are reshaping the African city, this article examines the night-time leisure economy as one particular social context in which the tensions and opposition between regulation/deregulation and informality play out. This article shows how ideas that centre on Northern entertainment spaces and drinking venues (bound with policy initiatives to reposition the city) have come to inform policy initiatives to regulate working-class public spaces in South African cities with the objective of controlling unruliness. Through a case study of informal and illegal drinking venues in Sweet Home Farm, a slum settlement in Cape Town, we provide an insight into the ways in which people seek to reclaim social space and impose their own vision of the creative city. The article demonstrates that while illegal drinking venues can be imagined as ‘unruly, unpredictable, surprising [and] confounding’, they are characterized by a responsive agility to the social, cultural and physical environment. We argue that the capacity and tenacity of informal drinking venues to adapt to regulatory pressures present a range of possibilities for reimaging the night-time leisure economy in ways that are inclusive of the poor and conducive to negotiation.     

Do long-term swings in the dollar affect estimates of the risk premia?

Foreign exchange returns exhibit behavior difficult to reconcilewith standard theoretical models. This article asks whetherthe recent findings of long swings in exchange rates betweenappreciating and depreciating periods affect estimates of theforeign exchange risk premium. We demonstrate how the 'pesoproblem' introduced by expected shifts in exchange rate regimescan affect inferences about the risk premium in at least twoways: (1) it can make the foreign exchange risk premium appearto contain a permanent disturbance when it does not; and (2)it can induce bias in the foreign exchange return regressionssuch as in Fama (1984).     

Problems and training needs of small business in Transkei

This note reports the findings of a survey of the problems and training needs of 121 small business owner‐managers in Transkei The average response rate was 83 per cent, with 63 per cent of the towns achieving a response rate of over 70 per cent Retailers made up the largest part of the sample (45 per cent). It was ascertained that the owner‐managers experienced management problems and that existing training was not meeting their needs.