62,377 research outputs found

    Personal financial literacy among high school students in New Zealand, Japan and the United States

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    Personal financial literacy is becoming increasingly important in the modern world, especially for young people. In this paper we compare financial literacy of high school students in Hamilton, New Zealand, with samples from Japan and the United States. We compare not only overall financial literacy, but also literacy across five dimensions (or ‘themes’) of financial literacy, and across three cognitive levels. We find that financial literacy is poor overall in all three countries, but is substantially worse in New Zealand and the United States than in Japan. The performance is similar across themes and cognitive levels for U.S. and New Zealand students, but Japanese students perform better mostly in terms of their greater knowledge of terminology and definitions, rather than better comprehension and ability to apply their knowledge. This suggests that all three countries should work harder to develop the financial literacy of their high school students

    Corporate Political Strategies in Weak Institutional Environments: A Break from Conventions

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    There is a lack of research about the political strategies used by firms in emerging countries, mainly because the literature often assumes that Western-oriented corporate political activity (CPA) has universal application. Drawing on resource-dependency logics, we explore why and how firms orchestrate CPA in the institutionally challenging context of Nigeria. Our findings show that firms deploy four context-fitting but ethically suspect political strategies: affective, financial, pseudo-attribution and kinship strategies. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CPA in emerging countries by arguing that corporate political strategies are shaped by the reciprocity and duality of dependency relationships between firms and politicians, and also by advancing that these strategies reflect institutional weaknesses and unique industry-level opportunities. Importantly, we shed light on the muttered dark side of CPA. We develop a CPA framework and discuss the research, practical and policy implications of our findings

    UK economic performance since 1997: growth, productivity and jobs

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    A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analyse the historical performance of the UK economy since 1997 compared with other major advanced economies and with performance prior to 1997, notably the years of Conservative government, 1979-97. We focus on measures of business performance, especially productivity growth. This is a key economic indicator as in the long run, productivity determines material wellbeing - wages and consumption. Productivity determines the size of the 'economic pie' available to the citizens of a country

    What\u27s Wrong With American Secondary Schools: Can State and Federal Governments Fix it?

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    [Excerpt] The poor performance of American students is sometimes blamed on the nation\u27s diversity . Many affluent parents apparently believe that their children are doing acceptably by international standards. This is not the case. In Stevenson, Lee and Stigler\u27s (1986) study of 5th grade math achievement, the best of the 20 classrooms sampled in Minneapolis was outstripped by every single classroom studied in Sendai, Japan and by 19 of the 20 classrooms studied in Taipeh, Taiwan. The nation\u27s top high school students rank far behind much less elite samples of students in other countries. In mathematics the gap between Japanese and Finnish high school seniors and their white American counterparts is about twice the size of the two to three grade level equivalent gap between blacks and whites in the US (NAEP 1988b; IAEEA 1987). The learning deficit is pervasive

    The Glasgow 2014 Games: Regeneration and Physical Activity Legacy

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    Both the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council expressed an intention to use the 2014 Commonwealth Games to inspire more citizens to become physically active. This report looks at the prospect of this being achieved in the East End of Glasgow, which served as the 'host' community for the Games, and was an area particularly identified as potentially benefitting from legacy.<p></p> In order to conduct the evaluation of physical activity legacy prospects in Glasgow's East End, we reviewed the major legacy programmes from the CWG in order to identify initiatives which are intended by their sponsors to support increased levels of physical activity. Following this, we used policy documents and stakeholder interviews to understand the mechanisms through which the programmes were intended to work. As a result, we identified 39 legacy programmes relevant to a sports and physical activity legacy, which we have divided into four legacy pathways: sports facilities; social infrastructure; schools; and environment.<p></p> Pathway One - Sports Facilities: This pathway includes programmes relating to investment in new and improved sports and leisure facilities, so that people have the opportunity to take more exercise.<p></p> Pathway Two - Social Infrastructure: This pathway relates to the development of social infrastructure through sports clubs, events, coaching and volunteers in order to stimulate grassroots participation.<p></p> Pathway Three - Schools: This pathway includes programmes which involve schools in order to promote greater levels of physical activity for children.<p></p> Pathway Four - Environment: This pathway covers programmes which aim to supporting physical activity and active travel through better-designed local environments.<p></p> The report combines the information gathered on the legacy programmes with evidence from the 2012 GoWell East survey to present an assessment of the prospects for each of the four legacy pathways.<p></p&gt
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