Rural tourism and livelihood strategies in Romania

Substantial changes in the Romanian countryside accompanied by the need for more robust economic activities have caused some families to turn to tourism as an economic diversification strategy. A qualitative study of selected rural tourism entrepreneurs indicates positive experiences, both economically and in other aspects of their lives. However, the development of rural tourism is highly uneven spatially and the Romanian Government should act more incisively to support families establishing guesthouses.     

Positive and negative effects of external influences on program design

Program fidelity to initial design is a critical measure in implementation research and often considered an important element of program success. This approach assumes that a program's initial design is immune to the influence of external forces and is based entirely on sound evidence, theory, and practice. Using a permanent supportive housing program for domestic violence victims as a case study, this research examines how external influences may affect program theory and design and evaluates whether such influences are perceived as opportunities or barriers by program administrators. Findings, based on document review, stakeholder interviews, and focus groups, reveal that funding and physical site characteristics, and to a lesser degree, community support and professional standards, were important external influences. Both opportunities and barriers affected program design, but these effects differed in timing and degree.     

Working with and for the citizens

This article argues that a better management of increasingly complex socio-ecological systems would require to adopt evidence-based policy-making and improve the science–policy interface by means of participatory action research involving scientists, citizens and policy-makers. The connectivity between the production of scientific evidence by experts and the delivery of policies by policy-makers is currently unsatisfactory. There is the need to find more effective knowledge mechanisms between researchers and policy-makers. A new way of connecting scientists and policy-makers is to invite a “third player” to the game, i.e. the citizens and stakeholders who are interested in or affected by policy decisions, to perform pilot experiments of participatory research. Participatory research combines different forms of knowledge. “Objective” knowledge produced by scientific disciplines is needed to describe, explain or understand a phenomenon, but participatory research brings in the contribution of citizens' everyday knowledge, e.g. their intimate familiarity with their environment and social context. The approach is illustrated with the aid of examples provided by a number of EU-funded participatory research projects coordinated by ISIS: RAISE (www.raise-eu.org), MOVE TOGETHER (www.move-together.net) and AWARE (www.aware-eu.net).     

A study of new referrals to a menopause clinic and their initial outcomes: how can we improve the service we provide?

This retrospective case-note study was performed to examine the ways in which an already established menopause clinic could improve service to its patients. The management of 151 patients was examined. Most were referred by their general practitioner and the most common reason for referral was to seek an alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The consultant saw 17% of the patients, and with the trainee was most likely to discharge the patient. Better information on alternatives to HRT, more consultant input and better use of telephone consultation for follow-up would enhance the service provided by the menopause clinic.     

The British Docks: A Test of Alternative Models of Wage and Employment Determination

In this paper we compare two well-known models of union bargaining: labour demand and efficient bargains. We use data on the British docks which belonged to the national Dock Labour Board, abolished in 1989. The docks industry is particularly well-suited for a test of the competing models: in fact it had a long tradition of union bargaining on manning levels and, at the same time, it experienced a long-run decline in employment. Also, jobless dockers were granted some form of unemployment compensation. The institutional features of the industry allow to test a strong version of the efficient bargain model, where the union equates the utility of those who work and those who do not. Our evidence supports the strong efficiency hypothesis: employment depends only on the opportunity cost of working. The secular decline in employment in the industry is explained mainly by technological progress, i.e. the introduction of containers.     

Gaining knowledge about parental mental illness: how does it empower children?

This study examined the utility of a digital video disc (DVD) intervention, designed to educate children, whose parents have depression and/or anxiety. Twenty‐nine children completed pre‐ and post‐DVD exposure questionnaires, on mental health knowledge and help seeking, and 18 were interviewed about their experiences and use of the DVD. Post‐DVD, children's knowledge of mental illness improved. The DVD also challenged mental illness misconceptions. Most children preferred watching the DVD with a parent. The study explains how children utilize information about mental illness.     

All‐Pay Contests

This paper studies a class of games, “all‐pay contests,” which capture general asymmetries and sunk investments inherent in scenarios such as lobbying, competition for market power, labor‐market tournaments, and R&D races. Players compete for one of several identical prizes by choosing a score. Conditional on winning or losing, it is weakly better to do so with a lower score. This formulation allows for differing production technologies, costs of capital, prior investments, attitudes toward risk, and conditional and unconditional investments, among others. I provide a closed‐form formula for players' equilibrium payoffs and analyze player participation. A special case of contests is multiprize, complete‐information all‐pay auctions.     

Nonexclusive Competition in the Market for Lemons

A seller can trade an endowment of a perfectly divisible good, the quality of which she privately knows. Buyers compete by offering menus of nonexclusive contracts, so that the seller can privately trade with several buyers. In this setting, we show that an equilibrium exists under mild conditions and that aggregate equilibrium allocations are generically unique. Although the good for sale is divisible, in equilibrium the seller ends up trading her whole endowment or not trading at all. Trades take place at a price equal to the expected quality of the good, conditional on the seller being ready to trade at that price. Our model thus provides a novel strategic foundation for Akerlof's (1970) results. It also contrasts with competitive screening models in which contracts are assumed to be exclusive, as in Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976). Latent contracts that are issued but not traded in equilibrium play an important role in our analysis.