Housing and capital in the 21st Century

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has attracted public, policy and academic attention. Although there is a growing research literature on the formation, distribution, utilization and wider implications of housing wealth there has been little discussion of Piketty’s work in housing studies. This paper outlines and assesses the major contributions of Piketty, including re-emphasizing distribution and political economy perspectives within economics, modelling growth and distribution, establishing detailed long run patterns of wealth change and policy implications. The paper highlights the significance of shifting housing wealth in increasing inequalities in some countries: housing matters in macro-shifts. We also draw out the implications of house price and wealth growth for the balance of rentier vs. entrepreneurial forms of capitalism. If Piketty’s work is important for housing research, we also argue the converse, that housing research findings can strengthen his analysis. The stylized facts of advanced economy metropolitan growth suggest that housing market processes and wealth outcomes will drive higher inequality and lower productivity into the future unless housing and related policies change markedly. Piketty, strong on evidence and conceptualization is weak on policy development and housing studies can drive more effective assessments of change possibilities

Preparation of an employee handbook

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston Universit

Effectiveness of de-implementation strategies for low-value prescribing in secondary care : a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Exploring the ‘middle ground’ between state and market: the example of China

Studies of housing systems lying in the ‘middle ground’ between state and market are subject to three important shortcomings. First, the widely used Esping-Andersen (EA) approach assesses only a subset of the key housing outcomes and may be less helpful for describing changes in housing policy regimes. Second, there is too much emphasis on tenure transitions, and an assumed close correspondence between tenure labels and effective system functioning may not be valid. Third, due attention has not been given to the spatial dimensions in which housing systems operate, in particular when housing policies have a significant devolved or localised emphasis. Updating EA’s framework, we suggest a preliminary list of housing system indicators in order to capture the nature of the housing systems being developed and devolved. We verified the applicability of this indicator system with the case of China. This illustrates clearly the need for a more nuanced and systematic basis for categorising differences and changes in welfare and housing policies

Using shared goal setting to improve access and equity: a mixed methods study of the Good Goals intervention

Background: Access and equity in children’s therapy services may be improved by directing clinicians’ use of resources toward specific goals that are important to patients. A practice-change intervention (titled ‘Good Goals’) was designed to achieve this. This study investigated uptake, adoption, and possible effects of that intervention in children’s occupational therapy services. Methods: Mixed methods case studies (n = 3 services, including 46 therapists and 558 children) were conducted. The intervention was delivered over 25 weeks through face-to-face training, team workbooks, and ‘tools for change’. Data were collected before, during, and after the intervention on a range of factors using interviews, a focus group, case note analysis, routine data, document analysis, and researchers’ observations. Results: Factors related to uptake and adoptions were: mode of intervention delivery, competing demands on therapists’ time, and leadership by service manager. Service managers and therapists reported that the intervention: helped therapists establish a shared rationale for clinical decisions; increased clarity in service provision; and improved interactions with families and schools. During the study period, therapists’ behaviours changed: identifying goals, odds ratio 2.4 (95% CI 1.5 to 3.8); agreeing goals, 3.5 (2.4 to 5.1); evaluating progress, 2.0 (1.1 to 3.5). Children’s LoT decreased by two months [95% CI −8 to +4 months] across the services. Cost per therapist trained ranged from £1,003 to £1,277, depending upon service size and therapists’ salary bands. Conclusions: Good Goals is a promising quality improvement intervention that can be delivered and adopted in practice and may have benefits. Further research is required to evaluate its: (i) impact on patient outcomes, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and (ii) transferability to other clinical contexts

The emergence and evolution of City Deals in Scotland

There is a resurgent policy emphasis on the role of city-regions as drivers of economic growth. Officials and leaders in such metropolitan areas, however, are confronted with challenges relating to administrative fragmentation, achieving alignment with national policy objectives, and demonstrating the capabilities to plan, finance and deliver effective policy interventions and investments. As a response to these challenges, policymakers are fashioning new governance arrangements, attached to experimental policy mechanisms, to develop urban policy. Of note, City Deals have recently emerged in the UK, and this paper charts their evolution across the UK, with a focus on the devolved administrations in particular. The paper ends with some reflections and questions about their roll out in Scotland

Treatment burden in survivors of prostate and colorectal cancer: : a qualitative interview study.

Peer reviewedPostprin

Regional house price cycles in the UK, 1978-2012: a Markov switching VAR

There is an extensive literature on UK regional house price dynamics, yet empirical work focusing on the duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles has received little attention. This paper employs Markov Switching Vector auto regression (MSVAR) methods to examine UK house price cycles in UK regions at NUTS1 level. The research findings indicate that the regional structure of the UK house market is best described as two large groups of regions with marked differences in the amplitude and duration of the cyclical regimes between the two groups. These differences have implications for the design of both macroeconomic and housing sector policies

Photocatalytic processes for sustainable hydrogen production from renewable sources

2010/2011The importance of hydrogen as an appealing energy vector, due to its high efficiency and environment-friendly use in Fuel Cells, is nowadays well recognized and documented. Nevertheless, in spite of several research activities in this field, the large-scale production of H2 is still a challenging issue in view of the possible transition to an H2-based economy. In this context, the development of materials capable of acting as multi-functional platforms for the sustainable generation, though representing a strategic target, is still far from being completely satisfied. In order to make feasible the dream of utilizing sunlight for sustainable energy production, it is of paramount importance to develop catalytic systems that are not affected by leaching or poisoning phenomena and possess a high photonic efficiency, in particular upon visible activation. Heterogeneous catalysis is a key area that can help solving this issue. Using the tools offered by nanotechnology, the tailored preparation of nanoarchitectures can lead to the obtainment of photocatalytic materials that show remarkably better performance than that currently achievable even with state-of-the-art materials. The main focus of this thesis is the preparation of such tailored photoactive materials and their characterization in order to obtain catalysts that are active and stable for the sustainable photocatalytic hydrogen production by photoreforming of biomass derived compounds as raw materials. Different synthetic approaches are developed in this work to achieve the above mentioned scopes. The materials were prepared either in the form of nanopowders with controlled morphology or of supported nanostructures. Embedding approach, in which preformed metal nanoparticles are encapsulated in porous titania, and photodeposition of metal nanoparticles over preformed tailored supporting titania were investigated for nanopowder materials. Different oxide-based materials were synthesized by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and Plasma enhanced-CVD for the supported systems. The CVD route is compatible with large-scale production, to prepare metal oxide nanostructures on Si (100), enabling the resulting metal oxide phase composition and nanoscale organization to be controlled by simple variation of the growth temperature. In addition, and more interestingly, the photocatalytic production of hydrogen on the supported catalysts upon irradiation with UV and even visible light proved that the control of the system morphogenesis is crucial to obtain good performances even in the absence of TiO2. The results obtained represent an important step forward in the exploration of new active nanosystems for the conversion of solar light into storable chemical energy. All the findings significantly contributed to the development of photocatalytic materials for hydrogen production.XXIV Ciclo196