What works, who works? The impact of active labour market programmes on the employment prospects of young people in Ireland

The international literature on active labour market programmes has generated inconsistent and confusing, but generally pessimistic, conclusions regarding their impact on the employment prospects of participants. This paper argues that much of this confusion is due to a general lack of attention to qualitative differences between programmes. The paper develops a typology of active labour market programmes, differentiating between training and employment measures on the basis of their orientation to the labour market and argues that programmes with a strong orientation to the market are more likely to improve the job prospects of participants than those characterised by weak market linkages. That hypothesis is tested using the results of a survey of young participants in labour market programmes in Ireland. The analysis shows that programmes with strong linkages to the labour market both enhance the employment prospects of their participants and increase their earnings, even when we take account of relevant individual characteristics such as education and previous labour market experience. -- Die internationale Literatur hat bisher inkonsistente und verwirrende, aber in der Regel pessimistische Schlußfolgerungen hinsichtlich der Beschäftigungswirkung für Teilnehmer in arbeitsmarktpolitischen Maßnahmen gezogen. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, daß ein Großteil dieser Konfusion darauf zurückzuführen ist, daß den qualitativen Differenzen von Maßnahmen zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wurde. Es wird daher eine Typologie aktiver Arbeitsmarktpolitik entwickelt, bei der die Weiterbildungs- und Beschäftigungsmaßnahmen nach ihren Marktbezügen unterschieden werden. Maßnahmen, die sich an den Bedürfnissen des Marktes orientieren, verbessern die Beschäftigungsperspektiven der Teilnehmer deutlich mehr als Maßnahmen mit schwacher Marktorientierung. Diese These wird - unter Verwendung von Kontrollgruppen - durch eine ökonometrische Analyse von jungen Teilnehmern in Arbeitsmarktmaßnahmen in Irland getestet und bestätigt: Maßnahmen mit starker Marktorientierung erhöhen sowohl die Beschäftigungschancen als auch die Löhne der Teilnehmer, selbst wenn man die relevanten individuellen Merkmale wie Bildung und Arbeitsmarkterfahrung in Betracht zieht.

Kernel Approximation on Manifolds I: Bounding the Lebesgue Constant

The purpose of this paper is to establish that for any compact, connected C^{\infty} Riemannian manifold there exists a robust family of kernels of increasing smoothness that are well suited for interpolation. They generate Lagrange functions that are uniformly bounded and decay away from their center at an exponential rate. An immediate corollary is that the corresponding Lebesgue constant will be uniformly bounded with a constant whose only dependence on the set of data sites is reflected in the mesh ratio, which measures the uniformity of the data. The analysis needed for these results was inspired by some fundamental work of Matveev where the Sobolev decay of Lagrange functions associated with certain kernels on \Omega \subset R^d was obtained. With a bit more work, one establishes the following: Lebesgue constants associated with surface splines and Sobolev splines are uniformly bounded on R^d provided the data sites \Xi are quasi-uniformly distributed. The non-Euclidean case is more involved as the geometry of the underlying surface comes into play. In addition to establishing bounded Lebesgue constants in this setting, a "zeros lemma" for compact Riemannian manifolds is established.Comment: 33 pages, 2 figures, new title, accepted for publication in SIAM J. on Math. Ana

What's the most practical way to rule out adrenal insufficiency?

A morning serum cortisol level >13 mcg/dL reliably rules out adrenal insufficiency, and the test is easy and safe to perform. Because of low specificity, patients with a level of ≤13 mcg/dL need further evaluation with the cosyntropin stimulation test (CST) (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, meta- analysis of diagnostic cohort studies)

P104 White coat hypertension is associated with increased small vessel disease in the brain

Objective: Small vessel disease, measured by brain white matter hyperintensity (WMH), is associated with increased stroke risk and cognitive impairment. This study aimed to explore the relationship between WMH on computerised tomography (CT) and white coat hypertension (WCH) in patients with recent transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or lacunar stroke (LS). Methods: Ninety-six patients recruited for the ASIST trial (Arterial Stiffness in Lacunar Stroke and TIA) underwent measurement of clinic blood pressure (BP) and ambulatory BP monitoring (APBM) within two weeks of TIA or LS. Patients were grouped by BP phenotypes. Twenty-three patients had normotension (clinic BP 140/90 mmHg and day-time ABPM <135/85 mmHg). CT brain images were scored for WMH using the four-point Fazekas visual rating scale. Patients were grouped into no-mild WMH (scores 0–1) or moderate-severe (scores 2–3) groups. The relationship between BP and WMH was explored with chi-square and logistic regression accounting for known cardiovascular risk factors (age, gender, smoking, diabetes and hyperlipidaemia). Results: 44% of WCH patients had moderate-severe WMH compared to 17% of normotensives (p = 0.047). Logistical regression incorporating WCH as the independent factor and cardiovascular risk factors as independent variables showed WCH to be the only independent significant factor contributing to WMH (p = 0.024). Conclusion: Patients with WCH were more likely to have moderate-severe WMH on CT brain than normotensives. WCH was associated with increased WMH, independent of other cardiovascular risk factors. This study suggests that WCH is associated with increased small vessel disease in the brain and may benefit from treatment

UTILISATION OF FORENSIC AUDITING TECHNIQUES FOR FRAUD DETECTION IN LARGE SCALE BUSINESS ORGANISIONS IN DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

This study on utilisation of forensic auditing investigation techniques for fraud detection in large scale business organisations in Delta State was necessitated by the growing incidence of frauds that are crippling businesses and socio-economic development of the state. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Related literature to the study were reviewed. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 260 accounting staff. A sample size of 160 was selected for the study using simple random sampling technique. A four-point rating scale questionnaire developed by the researchers was used for data collection. Cronbach Alpha method was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire and this yielded reliability coefficient values of 0.83 and 0.88 respectively for the sections with an overall reliability of 0.86. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to ascertain the homogeneity of the respondents while t-test and analysis of variance were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that the accounting staff lowly utilised background investigation technique for fraud detection while investigative interview was moderately utilized. Furthermore, it was found that types and status of organization in NSE did not significantly influence their ratings on utilisation of background investigation and investigative interview for fraud detection. From the findings of the study, it was concluded that the accounting staff did not utilize forensic auditing investigation techniques for fraud detection in large-scale business organisations as required. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among others, employees of large-scale business organisations should endeavour to support forensic auditors with relevant background information that could lead to fraud detection to ensure that the occurrence of fraud is minimized.  Article visualizations

Discovering Collaborative Advantage: The Contributions of Goal Categories and Visual Strategy Mapping

Collaboration can make sense when there is some sort of “collaborative advantage” to be gained, meaning organizations can achieve something together that they cannot easily achieve by themselves. However, the literature is essentially silent on how to identify collaborative advantage. This article addresses this shortcoming in the theory of collaborative advantage for public purposes by proposing a set of goal categories that may be used to help articulate collaborative advantage and introducing the use of visual strategy mapping as part of a facilitated group process to figure out what the collaborative advantage might be. Collaborative advantage, as it is normally understood, consists of shared core goals. Collaborative advantage for public purposes should take into account public values beyond shared core goals

On the holomorphic factorization for superconformal fields

For a generic value of the central charge, we prove the holomorphic factorization of partition functions for free superconformal fields which are defined on a compact Riemann surface without boundary. The partition functions are viewed as functionals of the Beltrami coefficients and their fermionic partners which variables parametrize superconformal classes of metrics.Comment: 5 pages, LATEX, MPI-Ph/92-7