894 research outputs found
Book review: El Sistema: orchestrating Venezuela’s youth, by Geoffrey Baker
No full textBook review of: El Sistema: orchestrating Venezuela’s youth, by Geoffrey Baker.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014; ISBN: 9780199341559
($35.00)Publisher PD
The Value of Recreational Inshore Marine Fishing
No full textThe relative values of New Zealand commercial and recreational marine fishing are unknown. Value transfer is applied to assess the likely value of inshore marine recreational fishing. The few relevant studies available report widely differing estimates of value. However, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the value of recreational fishing is of the same order of magnitude as commercial fishing.Value transfer, recreational fishing, Environmental Economics and Policy,
Collective Improvisation: The Practice and Vision of Ingemar Lindh
No full textIngemar Lindh's research on the principles of collective improvisation and performance conceived as process announce an important development in the 20th-century tradition of the actor's work. After early studies with Étienne Decroux and working collaborations with Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, and Yves Lebreton, Lindh founded the first laboratory theatre in Sweden in 1971, the Institutet för Scenkonst. His practice of collective improvisation is viewed in light of postdramatic concerns such as its resistance to fixed scores, directorial montage, and choreography as an organizing principle
‘Like a Mason Addressing a Block’: Materiality and Design in Geoffrey Hill’s Poetry
No full textThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Shearsman Books via the ISBN in this recordNote change of chapter title between accepted and published versionsArguing against the notion that contemporary British poetry is either insular or apolitical, this essay takes a new, interdisciplinary approach to the twenty-first century poetic redeployment of European material culture. It takes as a case study the work of the contemporary British poet, Geoffrey Hill. Hill's poetry makes strategic use of the built environment, in order to negotiate both the European cultural inheritance and to foreground its importance in the British poetic imagination. Reinvesting in built structure on the page, Hill’s inter-artistic eye keeps his audience historically and politically attuned to the uses to which stones, tablets and building blocks are used and re-used across the arts (to attract new audience gazes; to both found and bolster artistic reputations). The powerful contribution of Italian, French and German design models to social, rhetorical and moral thought in British poetry have frequently been neglected in scholarship of contemporary British poetics. This essay offers a corrective, focusing on Hill's distinctive contemporary attention to this shared design politics. Hill's work foregrounds the importance of this European influence, and works consciously to redirect the way that contemporary British audiences understand poetry's complex cultural inheritance and its legacy
Dichotomous choice contingent valuation probability distributions
No full textParametric distributions applied to dichotomous choice contingent valuation data invoke assumptions about the distribution of willingness to pay that may contravene economic theory. This article develops and applies distributions that allow the shape of bid distributions to vary. Alternative distributions provide little, if any, improvement in statistical fit from commonly used distributions. While median willingness to pay is largely invariant to distribution, estimates of mean consumer surplus diverge widely. Sensitivity analysis to determine benefit measure response to distributional assumptions is essential to prevent erroneous policy advice from applied dichotomous choice research.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Extra-market values and water management in New Zealand
No full textEfficient water management requires information on the magnitudes of all values associated with water volumes and quality, both in-situ and in extractive uses. This paper reviews and summarises New Zealand research into extra-market values placed on water. Studies have addressed issues as diverse as maintenance of ground water and instream flows, the value of recreational activities, and the quality of household water supplies. Results indicate that people place high values on avoiding further degradation of the natural environment, and in-situ values can have a significant role in water allocation efficiency despite high consumptive values of water.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Valuing the environment: Economic theory and applications
No full textResource use decisions entail the comparison of a range of diverse consequences associated with each possible use. Many means exist to simplify comparison of otherwise incommenurable values. The move toward a 'more market' economy indicates however, that financial considerations will be given more weight than previously in determining resource allocations. This is consistent with our observation of trends in many countries. Many consequences of resource uses are not incorporated in market prices, either because of imperfections in markets which mean that some values are not fully captured, or because a market does not exist at all. Because of their public nature many goods are supplied free, or at nominal rates, by government, or can only be maintained by government intervention. This is certainly the case for many environmental goods which are available for all to use or appreciate; examples include: clean air, national parks, wild and scenic rivers, wildlife populations, scenic landscapes and quiet.
The valuation of New Zealand's natural resources has become a priority task in view of the new economic policies. In particular, questions are being asked about the economic and welfare significance of changes in natural resource management which are not reflected by market prices. There exists a need to provide decision makers with information on non-market values.
In response to this need, the Centre for Resource Management has an ongoing research and teaching programme aimed at advancing knowledge for the management of New Zealand's resources. In December 1985 the Centre hosted a workshop at the University of Canterbury in non-market valuation methods and their use in environmental planning. The objective of this four-day workshop was to advance understanding of these methods and how they might be used in planning. Because of the limited knowledge of non-market valuation methods in New Zealand the workshop covered a range of topics, from the need for these methods, their non-technical description, likely areas of implementation, advanced description and economic theory of methods, problems in applying results to decision making, and case study examples.
This book is a comprehensive review of theory, the major methods, and their application. It is based on contributions to the workshop which address a wide range of concerns for the application of non-market valuation in New Zealand. These concerns can be classified into three broad areas: the need for non-market values, how the information could be used, and the methods for estimating non-market values. Papers will be found which address each of these concerns, making this a useful reference source for those involved in all aspects of public resource administration, those holding public office, students, academics, and those charged with valuing our natural resources
Regional anaesthesia for caesarean section in severe preeclampsia: spinal anaesthesia is the preferred choice
No full textPart of the Portfolio Thesis by Geoffrey H. Sharwood-Smith: The inferior vena caval compression theory of hypotension in obstetric spinal anaesthesia: studies in normal and preeclamptic pregnancy, a literature review and revision of fundamental concepts, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1815Standard textbooks advocate epidural rather than spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section in severe preeclampsia. The basis for this recommendation is the theoretical risk of severe hypotension but no published scientific studies have been identified to support this assertion. We therefore designed a prospective study to compare spinal versus epidural anaesthesia in severely pre-eclamptic patients requiring hypotensive therapy. Following ethics committee approval, 28 women with preeclampsia requiring hypotensive medication who were scheduled for urgent (not emergency) or elective caesarean section consented to receive epidural or spinal anaesthesia by random assignment. Seven patients were excluded due to protocol violations. Four of these were in the epidural group of which two were excluded due to inadequate analgesia. No spinal patient was excluded because of inadequate analgesia. Mean ephedrine dosage was 5.2 mg (range 0–24 mg) in the spinal group and 6.3 mg (range 0–27 mg) in the epidural group. Six of the 11 patients in the spinal group required no ephedrine as did five of 10 in the epidural group. One patient in the spinal group suffered from mild intraoperative pain. By contrast in the epidural group three patients had mild pain and four others had pain severe enough to warrant intraoperative analgesia. There were no differences in neonatal outcomes. These findings support recent studies suggesting the safety and efficacy of spinal anaesthesia in this group of patients.Publisher PD
Learning by Numbers
No full textGeoffrey E.R. Lloyd's paper compares the topics treated by the authors in
this issue on Chinese notions of number with similar topics in ancient
Greece. The author is mainly based on Greek treatises of philosophy,
astronomy and mathematics and also stresses the social aspects of "the
science of numbers" in Greece and China.Apprendre par les nombres
L'auteur compare les sujets traités par les divers articles de ce recueil consacré aux notions chinoises de nombre avec les sujets semblables développés en Grèce ancienne. Il envisage essentiellement des traités grecs de philosophie, d'astronomie et de mathématiques, et insiste également sur les aspects sociaux de la « science des nombres » en Chine et en Grèce.Lloyd Geoffrey E. R. Learning by Numbers. In: Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, 1994, n°16. Sous les nombres, le monde : Matériaux pour l'histoire culturelle du nombre en Chine ancienne, sous la direction de Alexeï Volkov. pp. 153-167
Efficient Deer Allocation: a field test of Gossen’s law
No full textEmpirical evidence suggests that Gossen’s law of decreasing marginal utility does not always apply in cultural, hobby and recreational contexts. This can have significant implications for efficient resource allocation. In the presence of increasing marginal utility, benefits are maximised by concentrating resource access in a small number of individuals, rather than widely distributing access. Satisfaction ratings from a panel of 698 hunters who undertook 2,917 red deer hunts provide a test of Gossen’s law with respect to number of deer killed. Latent class ordered logit models outperformed random parameters models and provided evidence of weak non-decreasing marginal utility for all classes of hunter. Study results are applied to test potential efficiency gains from imposing a one red deer per hunt bag limit
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