Can Choice in Welfare States Be Equitable?

Whether choice is fine or dire for the welfare state is a question that cannot be answered theoretically. That is the conclusion of this article, which discusses conditions that must be fulfilled if choice or increased choice are not to be reflected in increased inequality in access to welfare services. The consequences of non-decision and stress in relation to choice are touched upon. The implication of the analysis is that concrete, empirical analysis is important in order to ascertain whether the conditions for ensuring an informed choice without negative impact on equity in modern welfare states can be fulfilled.     

The 5K Run Toolkit: A Quick,Painless, and Thoughtful Approach to Managing Print Journal Backruns

Increasingly, academic libraries are choosing to discard or place in storage print journals that are now available online. The identification of these titles and related collection analysis activities are often time-intensive. The approach at the University of Saskatchewan Library was to develop an online toolkit that combined available data from disparate sources including the integrated library system, SFX link resolver, and OCLC's WorldCat and then present them in a collaborative open source environment. This paper demonstrates how the careful combination of existing data presented in a simple online format allowed subject specialists to make accurate print journal deselection decisions quickly and painlessly.     

The rules of conditional inference: Is there a universal definition of nonformation?

Summary We consider the ideas of sufficiency and ancillarity for parametric models with nuisance parameters, and more generally Barndorff-Nielsen's notion of nonformation. The original four definitions of non-formation, namelyB-,S-,G- andM-nonformation, each cover different types of models. We stress the interpretation of nonformation in terms of the idea of perfect fit. This leads to a new definition of nonformation, calledI-nonformation, which is well suited for inference in exponential families. We also consider Rémon's concept ofL-sufficiency, and a recent extension toL-nonformation, due to Barndorff-Nielsen, which unifies and extendsB-,S- andG- nonformation. We study the relations between these six definitions, and show that they are all special cases ofM-nonformation. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. From ‘Animal Farm’, by G. Orwell (1945).