Development of bookkeeping exercises to supplement the textbook in beginning bookkeeping classes.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Healthcare choice: Discourses, perceptions, experiences and practices

Policy discourse shaped by neoliberal ideology, with its emphasis on marketisation and competition, has highlighted the importance of choice in the context of healthcare and health systems globally. Yet, evidence about how so-called consumers perceive and experience healthcare choice is in short supply and limited to specific healthcare systems, primarily in the Global North. This special issue aims to explore how choice is perceived and utilised in the context of different systems of healthcare throughout the world, where choice, at least in policy and organisational terms, has been embedded for some time. The articles are divided into those emphasising: embodiment and the meaning of choice; social processes associated with choice; the uncertainties, risks and trust involved in making choices; and issues of access and inequality associated with enacting choice. These sociological studies reveal complexities not always captured in policy discourse and suggest that the commodification of healthcare is particularly problematic

Strict Liability and the Liberal Justice Theory of Torts

Ask a group of tort scholars to explain the relationship between fault and strict liability and the responses are likely to be sharply split. An economist might reply that strict liability—assigned on the basis of efficiency—should be the rule and fault, if it is to apply at all, but a reluctant and occasional exception. A moralist, however, would likely give the opposite opinion—that fault, defined as deontological culpability, should be the rule and strict liability the exception. Ironically, both economists and moralists often base their views on liberal principles. Economists rely on the political dimension of liberalism, arguing that government generally should not intervene in free market transactions, but if it must, it should do so only with clear tort rules that minimize accident costs. Not surprisingly, moralists rely on the moral dimension of liberalism, contending that tort law should promote private rights and freedoms by creating and enforcing personal responsibilities. Both views, however, share the same three flaws. Methodologically, they are one-dimensional in outlook (focusing on either the moral or the political, but not both) and unilateral in objective (seeking to either punish or deter injurers while virtually ignoring the injured). Substantively, they are strangely illiberal (promoting either social welfare or some particular conception of the Good). In this article, I offer a liberal justice tort theory that avoids these pitfalls. It is holistic, encompassing both sides of tort law’s dual personality; relational, invoking justice concepts that illuminate the bilateral aspects of all torts; and classic, adopting a longstanding and mainstream perspective that seeks only to protect and promote individual liberty. After recapturing and redefining strict liability, I demonstrate how that ancient concept can lay the groundwork for a new metatheory of torts. My thesis, in short, is that strict liability is both a moral-political and a substantive-procedural concept that must be implemented in a two-step process. The first step determines whether the parties’ encounter and its effects were consensual. If consent exists, the consenter is held strictly liable for her own loss, irrespective of the fault of her counterpart. If no consent is found, or if it is not an issue, liberal justice theory then implements a scheme of reasonableness, grounded in concepts of strict law and equity, to determine the actor’s liability. Strict law creates substantive rules that forbid, inhibit or sanction certain people, activities or relations that pose the greatest and surest threats to freedom and equality. However, even when a person, activity or relationship is not covered by a strict substantive rule, equity may episodically impose strict procedural requirements on actors who hold an unfair advantage in the trial of their actions. Because litigation itself is a threat to the freedom of the loser, the ad hoc adjustment of procedural burdens serves to correct an important imbalance between the parties and restores them to a state of moral and political equality

Is There a Relationship between the Gender of the CEO and Short-Termism or Long-Termism?

Based on a panel of S&P 1500 firms from the period of 2008-2016, we evaluate whether firms managed by female CEOs exhibit the same short-termism or long-termism as firms managed by male CEOs. We evaluate in terms of market based, firm based and investment indicator. Our goal is to better understand if there is a relationship between the gender of the CEO and short-termism or long-termism. Our results find firms with female CEOs have lower Tobin’s Q, lower ROA, however, they spend more on research and development than firms run by male CEOs

DETERMINATION OF EXPLOSIVE ENERGY PARTITION VALUES IN ROCK BLASTING THROUGH SMALL-SCALE TESTING

Blasting is a critical part of most mining operations. The primary function of blasting is to fragment and move rock. For decades, attempts have been made at increasing the efficiency of blasting to reduce costs and increase production. Most of these attempts involve trial and error techniques that focus on changing a single output. These techniques are costly and time consuming and it has been shown that as one output is optimized other outputs move away from their optimum level. To truly optimize a blasting program, the transfer of explosive energy into individual components must be quantified. Explosive energy is broken down into five primary components: rock fragmentation, heave, ground vibration, air blast, and heat. Fragmentation and heave are considered beneficial components while the remaining are considered waste. Past energy partitioning research has been able to account for less than 30% of a blast’s total explosive energy. The purpose of this dissertation was to account for a greater percentage of the explosive energy available during a blast. These values were determined using measurement techniques not previously applied to energy partitioning research. Four small-scale test series were completed, each designed to isolate individual energy components. Specific energy components measured include borehole chambering, elastic deformation (ground vibration), translational and rotational kinetic energy (heave), and air overpressure (air blast). This research was able to account for 73% of the total explosive energy. Borehole chambering (13%), rotational kinetic energy (25%), translational kinetic energy (5%), and air overpressure (28%) were determined to be the largest components. Prior research efforts have largely ignored rotational kinetic energy and have only been able to offer predictions for the values of borehole chambering and air overpressure energies. This dissertation accounted for a significantly higher percentage of total available explosive energy than previous research efforts using novel measurement techniques. It was shown that borehole chambering, heave, and air blast are the largest energy components in a blast. In addition to quantifying specific energy partitions, a basic goal programming objective function was proposed, incorporating explosive energy partitioning and blasting parameters into a framework that can be used for future energy optimization

The Distorted Reality of Civil Recourse Theory

In their recent article Torts as Wrongs, Professors John C.P. Goldberg and Benjamin C. Zipursky offer their most complete and accessible explanation of the civil recourse theory (CRT) of tort law. A purely descriptive account, CRT holds that tort law is exclusively a scheme of private rights for the redress of legal wrongs and is not a pragmatic mechanism for imposing strict liability or implementing public policy. The present paper challenges this view by revealing critical errors in its perspective, methodology, and analysis. It shows that Goldberg and Zipursky do not objectively observe tort law and uncritically report what they see; instead, they employ a partial perspective to interpret the facts and rely on their own predilections to support their subjective conclusions. Constrained by this biased outlook, Goldberg and Zipursky misinterpret the concept of strict liability, grossly underestimating its pervasiveness, embeddedness, and practical and structural significance. For similar reasons, the authors simply ignore the prodigious presence of instrumental considerations in the core wrongs-based action of negligence, viewing them as marked departures from tort law rather than accretive adaptations to its evolving content. Having exposed the distorted reality of CRT, the paper encourages the authors to recast that theory as a normative enterprise-one which prescribes a treatment for unprincipled instrumentalism and a plan for restoring rights and wrongs to tort law

Anomalies in Intentional Tort Law

All intentional torts are governed by three basic principles: (1) intent is a necessary and sufficient basis for holding someone liable; (2) each intentional tort must violate its own specific behavioral rule; and (3) all intentional torts require proof of the defendant\u27s fault. Together, these principles appear to make intentional tort law both unique and self-contained. The first principle justifies creating an intentional tort theory of recovery. The second principle distinguishes that theory from negligence, which bases liability on the fixed standard of reasonable care. The third principle separates intentional torts from the no-fault theory of strict liability. Of course, this jurisprudential scheme has never been as perfect as it sounds. Like any classification system, it contains some obvious anomalies. For example, the concept of tortious intent, defined as scienter, includes behavior which is clearly not purposeful. In addition, the doctrine of transferred intent creates a legal fiction that artificially shifts intent from one person to another. More discretely, the mistake doctrine imputes intent to persons whose conduct clearly is unintentional. Until now, these anomalies have been viewed as rather trivial blemishes on an otherwise healthy corpusjuris. In this article, however, I intend to show that the flaws in intentional tort law are far greater in number, and far more serious, than previously imagined. Indeed, they are so numerous and substantial, they actually undercut each of the law\u27s three sustaining tenets. The truth, I shall argue, is that intent is never a sufficient basis for imposing liability. Instead, liability is always based on the negligence concept of reasonableness. Since unreasonableness is presumed from intent, proof of fault is never required. Rather, all intentional torts actually impose a form of strict liability. Unlike the anomalies mentioned above, these observations cannot be casually dismissed; in fact, they could hardly be more important or timely. Obviously, all jurisprudential regimes are expected to be both accurate and comprehensible. However, the expectations for intentional tort jurisprudence are even higher. Intentional torts represent one-third of tort law\u27s theoretical paradigm. They are both defined by and distinguished from their theoretical counterparts, negligence and strict liability. Thus, if intentional tort jurisprudence contains any serious conceptual flaws, they could not be easily isolated or neatly cabined from the whole. Instead, they would threaten tort law\u27s entire supporting structure. Today that structure is under review. In its mission to restate tort law, the American Law Institute currently is reconsidering all of the law\u27s basic principles, including those contained in the jurisprudence of intentional torts.4 Thus, if something is fundamentally wrong with that jurisprudence, now would be the time to fix it. In fact, if the flaws run as deep as I suspect, the time would be ripe to shift the law toward a new theoretical paradigm. In the remainder of this article, I will show how the many anomalies in intentional tort law create the need for such a shift, and will suggest at least one option for change. I will begin, in Part II, by examining the current theoretical paradigm of tort law. This paradigm defines the avowed interrelationship among intentional tort theory and the theories of negligence and strict liability. In the next three parts, I will show how these theoretical distinctions break down in practice. Specifically, Part III demonstrates the misfit between intentional tort theory and the cases falling both within and beyond its reach. Part IV then reveals the overlap between intentional tort theory and the theory of negligence. To round out this discussion, Part V uncovers the remarkable and ironic affinities between intentional torts and strict liability. Finally, in the Conclusion and Proposal, I offer a new theoretical paradigm based on the concept of reasonableness which not only captures the spirit of intentional tort law, but also eliminates its most enervating anomalies