People and their waste in an emergency context: The case of Monrovia, Liberia

Liberia has gone through civil crisis for over a decade which has resulted in the destruction of infrastructure and disruption of basic services delivery particularly in Monrovia, the capital city. Most of the 1.3 million people living in Monrovia are without adequate environmental sanitation and waste management services which situation poses a serious health risk to the residents. The current waste management service coverage is less than 20% and disposal is by indiscriminate open dumping. In 2003, there were series of outbreaks of cholera epidemics in the city during which time a total of 26,651 cases were reported with many dying.The waste management plan was initiated as an exit strategy of UNICEF following an intervention response programme to assist the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) whose capacity in this area had been crippled as a result of years of war, through the provision of support in solid waste collection and disposal.The objectives of the plan were to:

(a) Improve waste management services delivery in the city.

(b) Strengthen the ability of the MCC to plan and manage the waste services delivery.

(c) Enhance cooperation of service beneficiaries through comprehensive and effective health education and service promotional campaign.

(d) Enhance revenue generation and community participation through the promotion of private sector and CBOs/NGOs active involvement in the waste management service delivery.

The general methodology adopted for the assignment entailed the following:Desk study and review of existing reports on Water and Environmental Sanitation (WES) in Monrovia and other relevant literature, consultation with stakeholders, site visits and participatory planning which aimed at soliciting the opinions of the various stakeholders involved with the respective components to capture their aspirations and experiences. It also covered collection and analysis of available information and data to facilitate the plan preparation and facilities design.The three-phased strategy (short, medium and long term) covering a period of 10 years (August 2004–December 2014), recommended a combination of technical options for collection based on the pursuit of staged development to allow for the adoption of realistically attainable standards within a framework of continuous and systematic improvements as economic conditions improved and new knowledge gained through practice. The plan sought to blend the capacity within the City Corporation with that of the private sector and NGOs/CBOs to respond to the diverse service demands of the city taking into consideration housing and infrastructural conditions, service costs and cost recovery to ensure sustainability. It also identified sources of financing and allocated financing responsibilities to facilitate effective plan implementation.     

Shoplifting,monitoring and price determination

Shoplifting is a major crime problem costing American retailers more than $10 billion per year. Surprisingly, despite the evolvement of an extensive theoretical literature on the economics of some major economic crimes, shoplifting has failed to attract economists’ attention. The present paper applies the economic toolbox to this problem, developing a principal–agent type model of shoplifting and shoplifting control. The model examines the customer's decision of whether to shoplift or not as well as the store's profit-maximizing price and monitoring intensity. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom that the observed rise in shoplifting calls for intensified monitoring and higher prices, showing that a rational response to increased shoplifting involves a reduction in both monitoring and prices.     

Collecting feedback as a tool to reduce care paralysis: something for family group conferencing coordinators?

Family group conferencing (FGC) coordinators in public mental healthcare are confronted with clients who have little faith in professionals and organizations, who hold off decisions in their family life, who avoid care and who sometimes behave in a hostile manner. A lack of initiative to deal with their situation is not only reserved for clients – all bystanders, including professionals, can suffer from it. The multiplicity and severity of the client's problems lead to a situation wherein everyone involved waits for the initiative of the other. The independence of the FGC coordinator – a fellow citizen, who is free of organizational loyalties and comes to assist other citizens in establishing a plan – seems to work well with the client group of the public mental healthcare. However, the coordinator cannot always prevent deferral or failure of conferences. Drawing on empirical and theoretical findings, this paper considers the possibility of collecting feedback as a way to contribute positively to the alliance between FGC coordinators and those for whom a conference is deployed. We highlight findings from three case studies that centred on multiproblem families. The findings indicate the importance of feedback theory for FGC coordinators in enhancing trust and engagement.     

An Empirical Assessment of Households Livelihood Vulnerability: The Case of Rural Ghana

The recent years witnessed a sharp drop in China’s demographic dividend; therefore, some reform measures about China’s fertility policy have been adopted to optimize population structures and to maintain demographic dividend. However, our simulation results reveal that the new two-child fertility policy cannot effectively deal with population ageing, and that China’s fertility policy needs further adjustment. Specifically, we find that the new two-child fertility policy will deteriorate demographic dividend before 2050, through combination of simulation results and formula derivation. Aiming to stabilize demographic dividend at ideal range all the time, we build nonlinear integer programming model to propose an appropriate reforming path for China’s fertility policy. Then, we simulate and compare demographic developments under the proposed reforming path with those under three possible fertility policies: one-child, two-child and no fertility restriction, verifying that the proposed reforming path has better performance on stabilizing demographic dividend than these three fertility policies have. Finally, sensitivity analysis of upper bound of research interval is conducted to evaluate the effect of the upper bound on proposed reforming path. Based on these results, we suggest that China should continue to execute current strict fertility policy before 2032, then begin to relax it gradually especially during 2036–2041, and completely cancel fertility policy after 2065.     

Data Dependent Cells Chi‐Square Test With Recurrent Events

We consider a recurrent event wherein the inter‐event times are independent and identically distributed with a common absolutely continuous distribution function F. In this article, interest is in the problem of testing the null hypothesis that F belongs to some parametric family where the q‐dimensional parameter is unknown. We propose a general Chi‐squared test in which cell boundaries are data dependent. An estimator of the parameter obtained by minimizing a quadratic form resulting from a properly scaled vector of differences between Observed and Expected frequencies is used to construct the test. This estimator is known as the minimum chi‐square estimator. Large sample properties of the proposed test statistic are established using empirical processes tools. A simulation study is conducted to assess the performance of the test under parameter misspecification, and our procedures are applied to a fleet of Boeing 720 jet planes' air conditioning system failures.     

Factors Affecting Juvenile Court Decisions in Israel: A Multivariate Approach*

This paper investigates the factors influencing the disposition of cases in juvenile courts. The factors considered are the prior record of the offender, the nature of the offense, the recommendation of the probation officer, and the age of the offender. These four factors are essential components of the juvenile justice system and as such are perceived to be crucial for the understanding of the court's decision. A multivariate analysis of the data is undertaken using the method of log-linear analysis for hierarchical models. In contrast to other studies that have utilized the same method but with fewer variables, the model arrived at in the paper seems to be more accurate and suggests that while the offense and the prior criminal record are quite important factors, their influence on the disposition of cases is greatly bound by the age of the offender and the recommendation of the probation officer.     

Reading sites as sights for reading. The sale of newspapers in Germany before 1933 : Bookshops in railway stations,kiosks and street vendors

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the founding of the German nation-state, the removal of various restrictions on the distribution of newspapers, a decrease in the price of paper and an improvement in printing techniques, lighting and means of communication opened the way in Germany for the mass distribution of reading material, in general, and newspapers in particular. In those years a closely-knit network of distribution of newspapers and journals developed which had a decisive role in popularising a reading culture in the period of transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Various aspects of this system of distribution are considered through examination of three points of distribution of newspapers and journals; bookshops in railway stations, kiosks and the sale of newspapers on the streets. Methods of distributing newspapers and the position of these points of distribution in the social space are considered to decipher the social and cultural significance of these points of distribution as 'reading sites': that is, as places where readers and newspapers came together, representing a variety of social, economic and cultural interests. Thus the aim of this paper is not only to examine the points of distribution as 'reading sites' but to reveal these places as 'sights of reading'; that is, as places that helped people orient themselves in the modern space. Orientation in the modern urban space depended more and more on the eyes and this rapid development of the 'viewing' culture led to an increase in semiotic sensibility and to a need for means of learning and sources of information to cultivate this sensibility.     

The Explanatory Power of Choice Bracketing: A Commentary on Read et al., “Choice Bracketing”

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty -     

Translating culture: missionaries and linguists in contemporary Yunnan Province

In an attempt to emulate early modern missionaries to Yunnan who engaged in the invention of writing systems for various ethnic groups, contemporary evangelical missionaries in Yunnan have become heavily involved in the realm of linguistics, focused on the preservation of endangered languages. While such activity may potentially be perceived as a challenge to the state-Chinese linguistic hegemony, I argue that the presence of missionary linguists is acceptable to the Chinese authorities as it does not threaten the paramount position of Putonghua but rather serves to integrate minority people into the state system. In addition, based on interviews conducted with a missionary working to produce texts for Kunming’s Buoyi population in their language, I aim to demonstrate how missionary linguists attempt to remold local culture by attempting to reconstruct ethnic identity around a language core. The article is based on fieldwork conducted in Yunnan in 2009–2010 and 2012.