Listening to Birds in the Anthropocene : The Anxious Semiotics of Sound in a Human-Dominated World

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Funding for much of the research on which this article is based was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK. I thank them and Tim Ingold for their support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hospital Cost Accounting: Saving Lives and Saving on Costs

Within an industry constantly pursuing accuracy, a cost accounting system that addresses the ongoing concerns of saving money and increasing efficiency is a must. Now more than ever, hospitals require reliable information to combat the conflicting relationship between an increase in spending on new instruments and specialized staff, but a decrease in funding. This project explores potential avenues to find a successful cost accounting method using past research, analysis of hospitals’ current environments, and expert opinions from hospital and healthcare personnel. Each hospital is different based on their environment, surrounding population, type of services provided, and personal demands. This study seeks to contribute to previous studies attempting to debunk the navigation process for each hospital looking to find their cost accounting perfect match and where sights should be set on in the future

Regulating civil mediation in England and Wales: towards a 'win-win' outcome

Civil mediation in Britain has rapidly moved away from being an option, for private choice, to becoming increasingly a compulsory or near-compulsory part of the public justice system. But regulation of the mediation industry remains minimal, and undertaken on an essentially private, self-regulatory basis. This raises a perception or actuality of risk that mediation and its regulation may better serve the interests of stakeholders in the mediation industry than the individual citizen who may come to mediation as a one-off player with no available alternative dispute resolution mechanism. This article argues that there are ‘public interest’ values and expectations of a constitutional and democratic nature at stake here which require recognition and protection via an effective and credible regulatory regime. It concludes that such a solution may in reality serve the interests both of the mediation industry and those individuals who may come into contact with it, offering a ‘win-win’ outcome

THE COMPARATIVE REGULATION OF INTENSIVE LIVESTOCK OPERATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA

Livestock Production/Industries,

How Poor are the Old? A Survey of Evidence from 44 Countries

This paper surveys 11 international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and the elderly. Although it focuses on OECD economies, some 44 countries are covered. The paper addresses a series of questions. What level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a whole? How has this changed over the past two decades? How many of the old are poor? How many of the poor are old? Are the oldest old poorer than younger pensioners? How do widows fare? What is the mix between public and private sources of income? Do the elderly poor remain poor? There is also a discussion of methodological issues. The results show that the incomes of the elderly are typically around 80 per cent of incomes of the populations as a whole. In most countries, this ratio has been increasing over the past two decades. Although there remain pockets of poverty among the elderly, most studies show that the old are represented proportionally or under-represented among the poor.pensions; incoem distribution

The tax treatment of funded pensions

This report makes an international comparison of the tax treatment of funded pensions and finds that the expenditure-tax system is the best way of taxing pensions because it does not distort the decision whether to consume now or save and consume in the future, unlike the comprehensive income tax; rather it taxes pensions once: either when contributions are made or when benefits are withdrawn. Moreover, it is easy to administer and the tax burden does not vary arbitrarily with inflation. The report also finds that in the context of the design and implementation of a pension reform, it is important to take the cost of tax relief, measured by tax expenditures, into account. The report is structured as follows: Section 1 considers a number of different ways to tax pensions. Section 2 describes the tax treatment of pensions in a range of countries. Section 3 extends the analysis to compute a summary measure of the generosity of tax incentives. Section 4 considers the link between the taxation of pension funds and the tax treatment of the underlying assets in which they invest. Section 5 examines the deductibility of contributions. Sections 6 and 7 look at the importance of pension funds and associated tax incentives in the aggregate. Section 8 assesses the objectives for taxing pensions, the options, and the arguments while section 9 concludes.Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies