The Effect of Excise Taxes on Cigarette Smuggling: An Instrumental Variable Approach

I use an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effect of excise taxes on cigarette smuggling. The IV approach addresses the potential endogeneity of excise taxes while controlling for other determinants of smuggling. I use panel data on 47 states from 1990-2009. The main results confirm the validity of the instrument, the percent of Democrats in the upper house of state legislatures, but do not reject exogeneity of excise taxes. Robustness tests using an alternative measure of cigarette smuggling find the opposite result. All models find that per capita income and the number of federal police per 100,000 residents are significant determinants of smuggling

Representation in Westminster in the 1990s : The ghost of Edmund Burke

Why are 'trustee' notions of representation still invoked in the UK House of Commons in the 1990s? In answering this question this article analyses the premises of Burkean theory and the arguments that these premises are of little relevance in the late twentieth century. Despite these dismissals of trusteeship, Burkean ideas are still articulated in the Commons some 200 years after they were first voiced. The idea of trusteeship can prove extremely useful to justify the actions of representatives when those actions conflict with constituency 'opinion', party policy or the wishes of interest groups. Examples of the occasions when Burkean notions have been invoked in the 1990s are provided

Introducing e-developers to support a university’s blended learning developments

Introducing technology in higher education raises questions about staff roles and the organisation of development practices. This article presents the findings from a case study that was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of introducing three centrally supported e-developers to work with academic teams to provide specialist support. The e-developer role is explained, and related to existing literature about learning technologists. The case illustrates how the e-developers worked collaboratively with academic staff and the perceptions of the academic staff, e-developers and educational technology leaders of the e-developer model used in a university in southwest London. The findings offer an opportunity to understand this kind of role, and the value of a model of staff development that does not involve taking academic staff out of the teaching area to become e-developers. The model supports ‘situative’ professional development, which helps promote technology integration into teaching and suggests that e-developers provided cost-effective mentorship which participants believed would have a positive impact on student learnin

The falling tide algorithm: A new multi-objective approach for complex workforce scheduling

We present a hybrid approach of goal programming and meta-heuristic search to find compromise solutions for a difficult employee scheduling problem, i.e. nurse rostering with many hard and soft constraints. By employing a goal programming model with different parameter settings in its objective function, we can easily obtain a coarse solution where only the system constraints (i.e. hard constraints) are satisfied and an ideal objective-value vector where each single goal (i.e. each soft constraint) reaches its optimal value. The coarse solution is generally unusable in practise, but it can act as an initial point for the subsequent meta-heuristic search to speed up the convergence. Also, the ideal objective-value vector is, of course, usually unachievable, but it can help a multi-criteria search method (i.e. compromise programming) to evaluate the fitness of obtained solutions more efficiently. By incorporating three distance metrics with changing weight vectors, we propose a new time-predefined meta-heuristic approach, which we call the falling tide algorithm, and apply it under a multi-objective framework to find various compromise solutions. By this approach, not only can we achieve a trade off between the computational time and the solution quality, but also we can achieve a trade off between the conflicting objectives to enable better decision-making

Exploring the Role of Purpose in the Lives of Career Changers: A Qualitative Inquiry

Although purpose in life is well-established as a key element of optimal human functioning, there is a lack of qualitative research exploring the role of purpose in individuals’ lives, particularly in the context of career change. The aim of the study is to gain a deep understanding of the role of purpose in the lives of career changers, including the process of developing purpose and its impact on individuals’ well-being. A qualitative method was employed that involved semi-structured interviews with a sample of thirteen participants who went through a career change process. The qualitative grounded theory analysis reveals a purpose process model, which posits that individuals experience purpose as an ongoing and dynamic process consisting of questioning, exploring, unfolding, and evolving as critical developmental stages of individuals’ journeys to discover and develop purpose. The process of pursuing a purposeful way of living generally has a positive impact on individuals’ hedonic and eudaemonic well-being but can also have its “dark side” that may detract from life. Practical implications for career counseling, as well as future direction of research are discussed

Exploring the role of purpose in the lives of career changers: A qualitative inquiry

Although purpose in life is well-established as a key element of optimal human functioning, there is a lack of qualitative research exploring the role of purpose in individuals’ lives, particularly in the context of career change. The aim of the study is to gain a deep understanding of the role of purpose in the lives of career changers, including the process of developing purpose and its impact on individuals’ well-being.  A qualitative method was employed that involved semi-structured interviews with a sample of thirteen participants who went through a career change process. The qualitative grounded theory analysis reveals a purpose process model, which posits that individuals experience purpose as an ongoing and dynamic process consisting of questioning, exploring, unfolding, and evolving as critical developmental stages of individuals’ journeys to discover and develop purpose. The process of pursuing a purposeful way of living generally has a positive impact on individuals’ hedonic and eudaemonic well-being but can also have its “dark side” that may detract from life. Practical implications for career counseling, as well as future direction of research are discussed