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Intergenerational transfer, parental support and housing: A literature review
No full textPurpose - This paper aims to define intergenerational housing support and assesses and synthesizes the existing literature on intergenerational support for housing to identify trends and possible areas for future research.
Design/methodology/approach - The methodology employed in this paper is a systematic literature review. A total of 32 articles were chosen for assessment. Upon thorough review, summary and synthesis, general trends and three specific themes were identified.
Findings - The review of 32 papers found that intergenerational support is a crucial strategy to help younger generations achieve homeownership. However, it also highlights the potential for social inequity resulting from unequal distribution of housing resources within families, especially regarding housing. Several potential gaps in the current research are identified, including the need for explicit attention to the provider's intention, exploration into the size and form of financial support for housing, understanding how parental housing resources differ in their transfer behaviors, and examining how parental motivations influence them to provide housing support.
Originality/value - This paper provides recommendations for further research on the topic, while also adding perspective to understand the micro-social mechanisms behind the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic inequality, especially in the housing market
Agrifood system participation and production efficiency among smallholder vegetable farmers in Northern Ghana
Get PDFFormalized marketing arrangements between smallholder farmers and produce buyers are gradually replacing spot market transactions in developing countries due to the rapid structural transformation of agrifood systems. This study examines the impact of agrifood system participation on the total value of vegetable production and technical efficiency (TE), using a sample of 423 vegetable farmers from Northern Ghana. We employ propensity score matching and W. Greene's selection bias-corrected stochastic production frontier methods to correct for observable and unobservable selection bias issues, respectively. We further use a metafrontier model to derive technology gap ratios (TGRs) and meta-TE for agrifood system participants and nonparticipants. The results reveal that agrifood system participants are about 50% more productive than nonparticipants. In addition, participants have higher meta-TE (58% vs. 55%) and TGR (98% vs. 94%) than nonparticipants. Variables such as farmer group membership, extension visits, mobile phone ownership, irrigation and road access are the notable correlates of smallholder farmers' participation in agrifood systems. The total value of vegetable production is significantly influenced by fertilizer, agrochemicals, seeds, irrigation, soil fertility, and location-fixed effects
Impact of farmer group participation on the adoption of sustainable farming practices—Spatial analysis of New Zealand dairy farmers
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the impact of participation in farmer groups on dairy farmers’ adoption of sustainable farming practices in New Zealand. A spatial propensity score matching method is used to consider the spatial dependence and social connections between farmers in the decision-making of farmer group participation and adoption of sustainable farming practices. The results show that farmers’ decisions of farmer group participation are affected by their neighbors’ choices, and participation in farmer groups has a positive effect on farmers’ adoption of sustainable farming practices. The findings indicate the important role of social interactions in farmers’ voluntary uptake of sustainable agricultural practices. Overall, the positive effect of farmer group participation on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices highlights learning and knowledge spillover among farmers, which emerges as important to the formulation of sustainable farming policy
Corruption, remittances, and public goods: A unified framework
Get PDFRemittances are an important source of income for the very countries afflicted by high levels of corruption. However, corruption undermines the development potential of remittances. With this in mind, we propose policy reforms that harness the potential of remittances while mitigating corruption. Unlike previous studies, we point to two channels: (1) the corrupt government’s trade-off between its financial interests (corruption), the provision of a public good, and the gains from a higher inflow of remittances; and (2) the household’s consumption of the public good relative to that of the privately obtained substitute of the public good
Irish Famine memorials and the influence of place Cuimhneacháin Ghorta na hÉireann agus tionchar áite : A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University
Get PDFThe Irish Famine is a defining moment in Ireland’s history. Surprisingly mass commemoration did not take place for this event until the 150th anniversary. This mass commemorative activity was however undertaken on a global scale, with almost 140 memorials being developed across eight countries. The gap between the event and the large global scale of the subsequent commemoration makes it unique. Given this, the role that place plays in the development of the memorial is magnified, as a result of other factors such as raw emotion, direct memory and socio-political factors being muted. To understand the impact of place further, quantitative categorisation is undertaken of each memorial to allow for the entirety of the memorials to be analysed. The use of radar diagrams to assist in this analysis allows for the patterns associated with the memorials to be visualised and compared. This analysis highlights the role that place plays in influencing the representation of the Irish Famine through memorials, whilst also underscoring the cumulative impact of other variables in memorial development. Despite generational distance, the emotions evoked through Irish Famine Memorials are clear. The Place of these memorials contributes and informs the design of the memorial landscapes
Deriving transmission losses in ephemeral rivers using satellite imagery and machine learning
Get PDFTransmission losses are the loss in the flow volume of a river as water moves downstream. These losses provide crucial ecosystem services, particularly in ephemeral and intermittent river systems. Transmission losses can be quantified at many scales using different measurement techniques. One of the most common methods is differential gauging of river flow at two locations. An alternative method for non-perennial rivers is to replace the downstream gauging location by visual assessments of the wetted river length on satellite images. The transmission losses are then calculated as the flow gauged at the upstream location divided by the wetted river length. We used this approach to estimate the transmission losses in the Selwyn River (Canterbury, New Zealand) using 147 satellite images collected between March 2020 and May 2021. The location of the river drying front was verified in the field on six occasions and seven differential gauging campaigns were conducted to ground-truth the losses estimated from the satellite images. The transmission loss point data obtained using the wetted river lengths and differential gauging campaigns were used to train an ensemble of random forest models to predict the continuous hourly time series of transmission losses and their uncertainties. Our results show that the Selwyn River transmission losses ranged between 0.25 and 0.65 m³ s‾¹ km‾¹ during most of the 1-year study period. However, shortly after a flood peak the losses could reach up to 1.5 m³ s‾¹ km‾¹. These results enabled us to improve our understanding of the Selwyn River groundwater-surface water interactions and provide valuable data to support water management. We argue that our framework can easily be adapted to other ephemeral rivers and to longer time series
Diverse approaches to learning with immersive Virtual Reality identified from a systematic review
Get PDFTo investigate how learning in immersive Virtual Reality was designed in contemporary educational studies, this systematic literature review identified nine design features and analysed 219 empirical studies on the designs of learning activities with immersive Virtual Reality. Overall, the technological features for physical presence were more readily implemented and investigated than pedagogical features for learning engagement. Further analysis with k-means clustering revealed five approaches with varying levels of interactivity and openness in learning tasks, from watching virtual worlds passively to responding to personalised prompts. Such differences in the design appeared to stem from different practical and educational priorities, such as accessibility, interactivity, and engagement. This review highlights the diversity in the learning task designs in immersive Virtual Reality and illustrates how researchers are navigating practical and educational concerns. We recommend future empirical studies recognise the different approaches and priorities when designing and evaluating learning with immersive Virtual Reality. We also recommend that future systematic reviews investigate immersive Virtual Reality-based learning not only by learning topics or learner demographics, but also by task designs and learning experiences
Green-labeled bond and sustainable bond: A missing puzzle piece
No full textClimate change and environment-related problems are major concerns globally. Stakeholders including governments, corporates, investors, and customers, play different roles in building a sustainable world. Their tasks are challenging because of limited financial resources. To finance activities that benefit the environment and minimise the severe impact of climate change, green-labeled bonds are one of the resolutions. With the green features, this type of fixed-income asset can signal investors and customers that the green bonds’ issuers are doing “good” for the future. However, there are other bonds that also hold similar green features as green-labeled bonds, but they are not readily recognised in the bond market. This paper describes a procedure to classify a new category for green-unlabeled bonds and call this as sustainable bond. The performance of green-labeled and sustainable bonds are compared. Evaluating the bond performance underpins the greenium fundamental of green bonds, and provides insight into applications of the new sustainable bond category in the economy.
The Green Instrument Indicator (GII) is used to screen all green-labeled bonds (green bonds, hereafter) in the universal debt market on Bloomberg. Green bonds are issued by corporate, municipal, government, supranational, and multinational issuers. Sustainable bonds comprise all green-unlabeled bonds in the debt market that are identified and classified as climate bonds, sustainability bonds, and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) bonds. We use three screening steps to identify sustainable bonds. First, we select climate bonds classified in the Bloomberg Industry Classification System (BICS). Second, we expand the screening criteria to the use of proceeds to screen sustainability bonds. Third, ESG bonds are selected using the management of proceeds (ESG) criterion. Based on data from 1 January 2012 to 30 November 2021, we obtained 4295 green bonds and 2955 sustainable bonds (1422 climate, 861 sustainability, and 672 ESG). Thus, 7250 bonds are used in this study.
We find that, in the short term, green-labeled bonds do not outperform green-unlabeled counterparts in terms of bond liquidity. In the long term, our result shows that green-labeled bonds are traded at 20 bps lower in terms of bond yields than green-unlabeled bonds. The result indicates the existence of a greenium effect between the two groups of green bonds: labeled and unlabeled. Our finding expands the current literature on the greenium phenomenon between green and vanilla bonds to the greenium effect that also holds within the green bond group. The pricing difference can be explained by a green label representing less information asymmetry on the greenness of bonds with lower potential environmental risk. Therefore, some investors prefer to pay a higher price for green labels. For the relationship between bond performance and bond features, our results reveal that the type of bond ownership plays a key role in explaining the performance of green bonds
Helping learners develop autonomy in acquiring multiword expressions
No full textSecond language (L2) learners stand to gain substantially from mastering a wide range of multiword expressions (MWEs), and several studies have examined the benefits of language courses that regularly draw learners’ attention to MWEs. However, most of these studies focused on the learners’ retention of the MWEs included in the course materials and did not examine a potential broader and longer term effect. In the present study, upper-intermediate students of English (N = 54) attended extracurricular classes over the course of 11 weeks (40 minutes per week) in which they either extracted MWEs from texts or engaged only in content-related activities. Outside the context of the experiment, the students occasionally wrote essays as part of their regular L2 curriculum. One of these essays was collected before the intervention, another shortly afterward, and a third 5 months later. Three coders independently identified MWEs in these essays. Both postcourse essays written by the students who had focused on MWEs were found to be richer in MWEs than those written by the comparison group. The difference was only in part due to a greater use of items encountered in the course texts, suggesting a broader and longer term effect on the students’ autonomous acquisition of MWEs
A data-driven approach for modelling Karst spring discharge using transfer function noise models
No full textKarst aquifers are important sources of fresh water on a global scale. The hydrological modelling of karst spring discharge, however, still poses a challenge. In this study we apply a transfer function noise (TFN) model in combination with a bucket-type recharge model to simulate karst spring discharge. The application of the noise model for the residual series has the advantage that it is more consistent with assumptions for optimization such as homoscedasticity and independence. In an earlier hydrological modeling study, named Karst Modeling Challenge (KMC; Jeannin et al., J Hydrol 600:126–508, 2021), several modelling approaches were compared for the Milandre Karst System in Switzerland. This serves as a benchmark and we apply the TFN model to KMC data, subsequently comparing the results to other models. Using different data-model-combinations, the most promising data-model-combination is identified in a three-step least-squares calibration. To quantify uncertainty, the Bayesian approach of Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling is subsequently used with uniform priors for the previously identified best data-model combination. The MCMC maximum likelihood solution is used to simulate spring discharge for a previously unseen testing period, indicating a superior performance compared to all other models in the KMC. It is found that the model gives a physically feasible representation of the system, which is supported by field measurements. While the TFN model simulated rising limbs and flood recession especially well, medium and baseflow conditions were not represented as accurately. The TFN approach poses a well-performing data-driven alternative to other approaches that should be considered in future studies