Assessing the influence of education attainment on the performance of small business entrepreneurs in Thailand and New Zealand / Chris Batstone, Geoff Perry and Pussadee Polsaram

The influence of education on the performance of entrepreneurs has been the focus of much discussion and debate amongst entrepreneurship researchers. Most of the formal studies on this topic have been undertaken in the USA and overall they find that the anecdotal stories of the successful poorly educated entrepreneur are the exception rather than the rule. In fact these studies find that education has been an important determinant of entrepreneurial success. Due to the recognition of the importance of entrepreneurship to a country’s development by policy makers throughout the world, and the consequent desire to create education programs and economic conditions that promote entrepreneurship, an international comparison of the contribution of entrepreneur education to business success is worthwhile. This paper compares the importance of entrepreneur education in the performance of New Zealand and Thailand small businesses. The findings suggest that in these two countries entrepreneur education may be negatively correlated with small business performance. A number of explanations for the result are proposed and suggestions for further research outlined

Derivation of Economic and Social Indicators for a Spatial Decision Support System to Evaluate the Impacts of Urban Development on Water Bodies in New Zealand

There is mounting evidence that urban development in New Zealand has contributed to poor water quality and ecological degradation of coastal and fresh water receiving waters. As a consequence, local governments have identified the need for improved methods to guide decision making to achieve improved outcomes for those receiving waters. This paper reports progress on a research programme to develop a catchmentscale spatial decision-support system (SDSS) that will aid evaluation of the impacts of urban development on attributes such as water and sediment quality; ecosystem health; and economic, social and cultural values. The SDSS aims to express indicators of impacts on these values within a sustainability indexing system in order to allow local governments to consider them holistically over planning timeframes of several decades. The SDSS will use a combination of deterministic and probabilistic methods to, firstly, estimate changes to environmental stressors such as contaminant loads from different land use and stormwater management scenarios and, secondly, use these results and information from a range of other sources to generate indicator values. This paper describes the project’s approach to the derivation of indicators of economic and social well being associated with the effects of urban storm water run-off on freshwater and estuarine receiving waters.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Observing Recovery: The Role of Implicit Discount Rates in ITQ Fisheries

This paper discusses the potential application of implicit discount rates (IDR) derived from Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) trading data as indicators of fishery bio-economic health. The theoretical background is discussed, and in the context of one New Zealand ITQ fishery we analyze the behavior of IDR over ten years of Total Allowable Catches (TACs). We find evidence of convergence of IDR toward the cost of capital over time and a statistically significant inverse relationship between IDR and stock biomass estimates. Further, there is evidence based in the statistical properties of time series of IDR and monthly stock biomass observations of a causal relationship flowing from biomass to IDR. These findings motivate discussion of the role of IDR as an observable condition in fisheries recovery. We note the potential to monitor and compare the progress of fishery recovery using the IDR statistic or derivatives that reflect its time path to long run values associated with the stock management goal. We argue that IDR provide the opportunity to aggregate fishers’ tacit knowledge with models of bio-economic optima in understanding the recovery process

Rate of Profit Return with ITQs: Fishing for Optimality

The year 1990 saw the introduction of individual transferable quota rights to the NZ rock lobster fishery. This paper presents an analysis of the evolution of profitability in five different quota management areas over the period 1990-2001. The bio-economic model of an optimal fishery provides the basis for econometric analysis. The rate of profit return in each region was regressed on the corresponding real interest rate and the marginal stock effect. Evidence is found for the existence of optimal fishery. In general the half-life value of each region’s rate of profit return is trending towards its mean value. Significant individual monthly effects are also evident when we regress the rate of profit return on a time trend and monthly dummy variables.Keywords: Quota prices, Profit return, Rock lobster fishery, Half-life, Individual transferable quota, Fisheries Economics, Bio-economic model, Time series, New Zealand, Profitabilit

Towards a plant-wide Benchmark Simulation Model with simultaneous nitrogen and phosphorus removal wastewater treatment processes.

It is more than 10 years since the publication of the Benchmark Simulation Model No 1 (BSM1) manual (Copp, 2002). The main objective of BSM1 was creating a platform for benchmarking carbon and nitrogen removal strategies in activated sludge systems. The initial platform evolved into BSM1_LT and BSM2, which allowed the evaluation of monitoring and plant-wide control strategies, respectively. The fact that the BSM platforms have resulted in 300+ publications demonstrates the interest for the tool within the scientific community. In this paper, an extension of the BSM2 is proposed. This extension aims at facilitating simultaneous carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus (P) removal process development and performance evaluation at a plant-wide level. The main motivation of the work is that numerous wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) pursue biological phosphorus removal as an alternative to chemical P removal based on precipitation using metal salts, such as Fe or Al. This paper identifies and discusses important issues that need to be addressed to upgrade the BSM2 to BSM2-P, for example: 1) new influent wastewater characteristics; 2) new (bio) chemical processes to account for; 3) modifications of the original BSM2 physical plant layout; 4) new/upgraded generic mathematical models; 5) model integration; 6) new control handles/sensors; and 7) new extended evaluation criteria. The paper covers and analyzes all these aspects in detail, identifying the main bottlenecks that need to be addressed and finally discusses the aspects where scientific consensus is required

The ENHANCES study--Enhancing Head and Neck Cancer patients' Experiences of Survivorship: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background Few cancers pose greater challenges than head and neck (H&N) cancer. Residual effects following treatment include body image changes, pain, fatigue and difficulties with appetite, swallowing and speech. Depression is a common comorbidity. There is limited evidence about ways to assist patients to achieve optimal adjustment after completion of treatment. In this study, we aim to examine the effectiveness and feasibility of a model of survivorship care to improve the quality of life of patients who have completed treatment for H&N cancer. Methods This is a preliminary study in which 120 patients will be recruited. A prospective randomised controlled trial of the H&N Cancer Survivor Self-management Care Plan (HNCP) involving pre- and post-intervention assessments will be used. Consecutive patients who have completed a defined treatment protocol for H&N cancer will be recruited from two large cancer services and randomly allocated to one of three study arms: (1) usual care, (2) information in the form of a written resource or (3) the HNCP delivered by an oncology nurse who has participated in manual-based training and skill development in patient self-management support. The trained nurses will meet patients in a face-to-face interview lasting up to 60 minutes to develop an individualised HNCP, based on principles of chronic disease self-management. Participants will be assessed at baseline, 3 and 6 months. The primary outcome measure is quality of life. The secondary outcome measures include mood, self-efficacy and health-care utilisation. The feasibility of implementing this intervention in routine clinical care will be assessed through semistructured interviews with participating nurses, managers and administrators. Interviews with patients who received the HNCP will explore their perceptions of the HNCP, including factors that assisted them in achieving behavioural change. Discussion In this study, we aim to improve the quality of life of a patient population with unique needs by means of a tailored self-management care plan developed upon completion of treatment. Delivery of the intervention by trained oncology nurses is likely to be acceptable to patients and, if successful, will be a model of care that can be implemented for diverse patient populations

Prevalence and architecture of de novo mutations in developmental disorders.

The genomes of individuals with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders are enriched in damaging de novo mutations (DNMs) in developmentally important genes. Here we have sequenced the exomes of 4,293 families containing individuals with developmental disorders, and meta-analysed these data with data from another 3,287 individuals with similar disorders. We show that the most important factors influencing the diagnostic yield of DNMs are the sex of the affected individual, the relatedness of their parents, whether close relatives are affected and the parental ages. We identified 94 genes enriched in damaging DNMs, including 14 that previously lacked compelling evidence of involvement in developmental disorders. We have also characterized the phenotypic diversity among these disorders. We estimate that 42% of our cohort carry pathogenic DNMs in coding sequences; approximately half of these DNMs disrupt gene function and the remainder result in altered protein function. We estimate that developmental disorders caused by DNMs have an average prevalence of 1 in 213 to 1 in 448 births, depending on parental age. Given current global demographics, this equates to almost 400,000 children born per year