A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database

Statistics New Zealandfs prototype Longitudinal Business Database is a rich resource for understanding the behaviour of New Zealand firms. In this paper we describe the elements of the database, access protocols for researchers, and potential future developments in the linking and availability of business data in New Zealand.

FDI and growth: what cross-country industry data say

Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Growth, Capital Intensity, Technological Progress, Total Factor Productivity

Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities

Describes nine communities using organized deliberation to consider public issues over several years and their accomplishments and analyzes how public deliberation addresses deficits in local democratic governance. Includes benchmarks and strategies

Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

National Forest Programmes in Europe: Generating policy-relevant propositions for formulation and implementation

The COST Action E19 on National Forest Programmes in a European Context assembled more than 70 researchers and civil servants from 20 European countries and the USA. Some meetings were also attended by scholars from Canada, China and Japan. The participants aimed to provide policy makers in Europe with improved means for the formulation and implementation of National Forest Programmes (NFPs) for ensuring sustainable forest management. In order to accomplish this objective the work programme comprised the following tasks: to interpret the basic elements and institutional and procedural requirements of NFPs, to assess the effects of these elements and requirements on NFPs, to assess the supporting and impeding factors for the development of substantive NFPs, to evaluate the significance of NFPs in comparison to other policy means

Relative remote rural areas (RRRA)in developed regions: an analysis of the Emilia-Romagna region to support policy decision making.

This paper addresses the identification and the analysis of the remote rural areas (RRA) that should be at the center of future regional development policies for periphery areas in averagely highly developed territories, such as the Emilia-Romagna region. However, since none of the areas of the region can be defined lagging or underdeveloped when compared with the EU 25 countries, it is introduced the concept of “Relative” Remote Rural Area (RRRA) which partially could recall the semi-periphery in the theoretical scheme of Immanuel Wallestrein or the trasition area of Friedmann. Methodologically, the investigation is done both by using as a basis an intermediate geographical level that can be considered in line with the NUTS4 one: the SLL (Local Working Systems) identified by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), and by a NUTS5-level cluster analysis performed using a selection of indicators, which includes demographic, socio-economic, employment, agricultural, infrastructure and commuting patterns. This work led to the identification and mapping of a set of municipalities that show the higher remote & rural features of the region. The Province of Ferrara resulted the NUTS3 level with the highest RRRA. After a discussion upon the main characteristics of this areas, preliminary policy indications for these territories are given.remotness; rurality; local working system (SLL); geographical economic analysis; regional policy

Restorative Justice: Using Written Contracts to Explore Reparation and Offender Growth

Restorative justice is gaining popularity across the United States and the globe. In contrast to the retributive justice system, restorative justice creates an environment where the offender and the victim are engaged in a dialogue about the offense and its implications and create a contract of requirements that the offender must complete to repair the harm. This study sheds light on the written contract as a vital part of the restorative justice process by describing who participated in the Boulder County Sheriff’s restorative justice program, the types of crime represented, the requirements of the written contracts and how the contracts varied across gender and age. A majority of the offenders were male between the ages of 15 and 17 years old and a majority of the crimes offenses against property. The study documents how the foundational principles of restorative justice are incorporated into the various requirements of the written contracts. All of the requirements of the contracts illustrated at least one of Howard Zehr’s principles of restorative justice. Another component of the study examines the contracts through the lens of Forget’s framework for evaluating restorative justice programs through measures of offender growth. This research may help inform thinking around selection of requirements that allow for direct observation and measurement of offender growth. By identifying the requirements that work to promote the foundational principles of restorative justice and associating them with measures of offender progress, the study potentially provides new information to help build more effective contracts