Unleashing Youth Potential: Understanding and Growing Youth Participation in Philanthropy and Volunteerism

This paper attempts to situate youth in philanthropy in the context of the organizational culture and practices of Canadian community foundations. It will explore the challenges and opportunities presented by engaging young people in community foundations, based on the development of Vancouver Foundation's Youth in Philanthropy program in British Columbia, and its dissemination elsewhere in Canada. Youth in Philanthropy is a province-wide program established by Vancouver Foundation in late 1997 designed to involve young people in their communities and in philanthropy through involvement with local community foundations

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the central concepts in a textbook that examines the role of media in the political sphere in comparative perspective. The book has a particular focus on media models, theories of news production, the journalistic profession as well as the performance of the media in elections, war, terrorism and on line. The book focuses on the media and journalists in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation

Examination of three attentional strategies on pain coping and recovery from the cold pressor : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

The literature supports the role of attention diversion strategies in the modification of pain perception. Recently it has been suggested that the presence of an overt action is a necessary component of these often multicomponent tasks. Research has also indicated that attention distraction and suppression strategies may carry with them long term cost. The present study compares the effectiveness of three attentional strategies in an attempt to isolate the necessity of an overt response. It also examines for the presence of a long term cost of these strategies in the form of a rebound effect. Sixty eight subjects were randomly assigned to one of four strategies: suppression, distraction through visual detection, distraction through visual detection with a response, and control. There were no significant differences between the groups on pain tolerance and pain ratings or on recovery. The recovery from the cold pressor was found to be significantly related to the tolerance time. Subjects who were exposed to the cold water longer recovered more slowly. These results are discussed in terms of pain theory and future research

A Reconsideration of Environmental Federalism

This paper provides a review and assessment of the debate over environmental federalism-the issue of the roles of different levels of government in environmental management. The paper begins with the presentation of three benchmark cases that provide a framework for thinking about the issue. It then offers a review, first of the theoretical literature and second of some new, provocative empirical literature on the race to the bottom. The paper contends that there remains, under certain circumstances, an important role for decentralized government in the setting of environmental standards and the design of regulatory programs. The central government, in addition to setting standards for "national" pollutants, has a fundamental contribution to make in supporting research in environmental science and pollution control technology and in providing needed information and guidance to state and local governments.environmental federalism, environmental management, environmental policy, environmental regulation

Pathos and patter in real estate parlance

This paper presents the first systematic analysis of estate agent language and employs Aristotle’s ponderings on the art of persuasion as a means of classifying the peculiar parlance of property peddlers. “Des. Res.”, “rarely available”, “viewing essential” – these are all part of the peculiar parlance of housing advertisements. The question is whether the selling agent’s penchant for rhetoric is uniform across a single urban system or whether there are variations, even within a relatively limited geographical area. We are also interested in how the use of superlatives varies over the market cycle. For example, are estate agents more inclined to use hyperbole when the market is buoyant or when it is flat? This paper attempts to answer these questions by applying textual analysis to a unique dataset of 49,926 records of real estate transactions in the West of Scotland over the period 1999 to 2006. Our analysis has implications for our understanding of the agency behaviour of housing market professionals and endeavours to open up a new avenue of research into the market-impact of rhetoric in the language of selling

On the Theory and Practise of Fiscal Decentralization

The traditional theory of public finance has made a strong case for a major role for fiscal decentralization. This case is based on an improved allocation of resources in the public sector. And it has four basic elements. First, regional or local governments are in a position to adapt outputs of public services to the preferences and particular circumstances of their constituencies, as compared to a central solution which presumes that one size fits all. Second, in a setting of mobile households, individuals can seek out jurisdictions that provide outputs well suited to their tastes, thereby increasing the potential gains from the decentralized provision of public services (Tiebout 1956). Third, in contrast to the monopolist position of the central government, decentralized levels of government face competition from their neighbors; such competition constrains budgetary growth and provides pressures for the efficient provision of public services. And fourth, decentralization may encourage experimentation and innovation as individual jurisdictions are free to adopt new approaches to public policy; in this way, decentralization can provide a valuable Alaboratory for fiscal experiments. However, this basic economic rationale for decentralization of the public sector is not quite so simple and compelling as it appears. Some of the more recent literature provides, first, a thoughtful and provocative critique of the traditional view of fiscal decentralization, and, second, some new approaches that reveal its dark side, especially in practice. There is emerging, in short, a broader perspective on fiscal decentralization that raises some serious questions about its capacity to provide an unambiguously positive contribution to an improved performance of the public sector. My purpose in this paper is twofold. First, I want to review the basic theory of fiscal decentralization. There are some loose ends to the traditional argument that open up some intriguing issues. Second, I want to turn to some of new literature on fiscal discipline in multilevel government. This literature has focused attention on some basic and destructive forces that can undermine the economic performance of a relatively decentralized public sector. I find it helpful to begin by revisiting a Decentralization Theorem that I formulated long ago. As a point of departure, I want to explain briefly why I introduced the proposition and the rationale for its particular form and proof.Fiscal Decentralization, Public Finance

STRAIN-INDUCED INTERACTION ENERGIES BETWEEN HYDROGEN-ATOMS IN PALLADIUM

The authors have made quantitative calculations of the elastic interactions between interstitial hydrogen atoms in Pd metal. These calculations use the Harwell HADES code, and hence go beyond the usual harmonic models. Results have been obtained for several potentials and, where appropriate, agree well with those of previous workers. They find (i) that the absolute values are sensitive to assumptions for the potentials, suggesting caution in the prediction of thermodynamic properties, and (ii) that there are significant few-body terms not included in the usual approaches. These extra terms affect the equilibrium structure, for example by removing the symmetry between fractional occupancies theta and (1- theta ), and may lead to the initial nucleation of metastable structures during hydrogenation. The present results suggest that corner-sharing tetrahedra are favoured

Attachment matters

A review of attachment research findings relevant to early years polic

Policy Analysis in a Second-Best World

This paper first describes the new literature in environmental economics on the so-called "double dividend" and then explores its implications for a broad range of economic issues. The basic finding in this literature is that in a second-best, general equilibrium setting, environmental measures raise costs and prices and thereby reduce the real wage. This rise in the cost of living reduces slightly the quantity of labor supplied in an already highly distorted labor market, giving rise to losses in social welfare that can be large relative to the basic welfare gains from improved environmental policy. These losses may be offset to some extent by using revenues (if any) from the environmental programs to reduce existing taxes on labor. This same line of analysis applies to many programs and institutions in the economy that raise the cost of living: tariffs and quotas on imports, agricultural price-support programs, monopoly pricing, programs of occupational licensure that limit entry, and many others. The paper thus suggests that traditional, partial equilibrium benefit-cost analysis has, in many instances, unwittingly omitted a potentially quite significant class of social costs from the calculations.