Academic Freedom Issues for Academic Librarians

Professors Danner and Bintliff argue that understanding academic freedom and faculty tenure is important for academic librarians, both to provide better perspective on the concerns of faculty researchers and teachers, and to highlight matters of common concern to librarians and faculty. The authors discuss the basic tenets of academic freedom and tenure, then compare academic freedom with the intellectual freedom concerns of librarians. The article concludes by introducing several current issues of importance to librarians, faculty, and everyone concerned with academic freedom on university campuses

Secondary Privatisation: The Evolution of Ownership Structures of Privatised Enterprises

This summary was prepared and edited by Barbara Blaszczyk and Richard Woodward of CASE - the Center for Social and Economic Research. In the project whose results are presented here, our team investigated the phenomenon of "secondary privatisation" (that is, the post-privatisation evolution of the ownership structures established as the result of initial privatisation) in three transition economies (the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia) in the years 1995-1999. Our research covered companies that were privatised under various privatisation schemes which established ownership structures whose nature was heavily determined by privatisation policy rather than market forces (including employee buyout programs and mass privatisation programs in which all citizens were given rights to acquire shares at prices significantly below market value). We present the post-privatisation changes in ownership structures of privatised companies and analyse the relationships between those changes and the economic performance of the companies. Much attention is also devoted to the role of the institutional environment. We hope that the results of this research will be useful for everyone interested in the little-researched question of what has happened to companies after privatisation in the transition countries.privatization, secondary transactions, corporate governance, transition economies, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland

Interchange fees in credit and debit card markets : what role for public authorities

Credit and especially debit card transactions are on the rise worldwide. Interchange fees are an integral part of the pricing structure of credit and debit card transactions. Indirectly paid by merchants to card issuers, interchange fees in most countries are set by credit and debit card networks. But in one country, Australia, the central bank is regulating interchange fees, and in several other countries and areas, including the European Union, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom, public officials are taking, or considering taking, a more hands-on regulatory stance. In the United States, it is largely the court system that is debating interchange issues. ; The payments industry has a strong vested interest in interchange fees. They are a major portion of costs that merchants pay for processing debit and credit card payments and are a major source of revenue for banks that issue the cards. One reason for recent interest in interchange fees in the United States is a shift in retail payments away from checks. Research sponsored by the Federal Reserve documents a rise in electronic payments and a decline in the use of paper checks, with a milestone recently passed where the majority of noncash payments are now made using electronic instruments. This shift is also occurring in other countries. Since paper checks typically do not have an interchange fee while credit and debit payments do, the shift is a major reason why merchants face a rapidly rising cost of processing payments. Card issuers, on the other hand, rely on associated revenues to provide a return to their substantial investment in card payment networks. ; Pacheco and Sullivan summarize the proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in May 2005, which explored issues surrounding interchange fees. The conference brought together a distinguished group of industry participants, antitrust authorities, central bankers, and academics.Credit cards ; Debit cards ; Payment systems

Privatization and Company Restructuring in Poland

Privatization, Company Restructuring, Poland, transformation

Did the Celtic Tiger Decrease Socio-Economic Differentials in Perinatal Mortality in Ireland?

Irish perinatal mortality rates have been falling steadily for a number of decades but evidence from the 1980s showed pronounced differentials in mortality rates across socio-economic groups. Between 1995 and 2006 Irish gross national product increased from 60 per cent of the EU average to 110 per cent. Real incomes increased across the income distribution during this period but income inequality between the top and bottom income deciles increased marginally. This paper examines whether socio-economic differentials in Irish perinatal mortality rates changed between the 1980s and 2000s. This task is complicated by demographic change in Ireland since the 1980s and its interaction with the birth registration process. Overall perinatal mortality rates have fallen from 14 per 1,000 in 1984 to 7 per 1,000 in 2006. Without adjusting for demographic change, differentials between professional and unskilled/unemployed groups have decreased from 1.99 to 1.79. Adjusted estimates suggest the real differential has decreased to 1.88.

Age Disparities in Unemployment and Reemployment During the Great Recession and Recovery

Analyzes patterns in the percentage of workers unemployed at any point between May 2008 and March 2011, number of months they were unemployed, wage losses at reemployment, and likelihood of workers leaving the labor force by age group

Redemption from the Inside-Out: The Power of Faith-Based Programming

Prisons are tense, cheerless, and often degrading places in which all inmates struggle to maintain their equilibrium despite violence, exploitation, lack of privacy, stringent limitations on family and community contacts, and a paucity of opportunities for meaningful education, work, or other productive activities. As a general matter, prisoners come to see prison as their home and try to make the most of the limited resources available in prison; they establish daily routines that allow them to find meaning and purpose in their prison lives, lives that might otherwise seem empty and hopeless. The resilience shown by prisoners should not be construed as an argument for more or longer prison sentences or for more punitive regimes of confinement, but rather is a reminder that human beings can find meaning in adversity. Prisons are meant to be settings of adversity but should strive to accommodate the human needs of their inhabitants and to promote constructive changes in behavior. Here, there are programmatic offerings that may provide prisoners with the hope, skills, and empowerment necessary to overcome barriers to achievement and success as human beings in any social context. A current line of inquiry has focused on faith based prison programs and the potential benefits that a deepened spiritual life might have on coping with the doing time experience, changing old lifestyles, and reducing the likelihood of people returning to prison. These points will be explored throughout this chapter

How Much Might Automatic IRAs Improve Retirement Security for Low- and Moderate-Wage Workers?

Estimates the extent to which requiring employers with no retirement plan to set up individual retirement accounts and automatically deposit a portion of pay would improve low- and moderate-wage workers' retirement security. Outlines policy implications

European versus US Unemployment: Different Responses to Increased Demand for skill?

According to Paul Krugman, "the European unemployment problem and the US inequality problem are two sides of the same coin". In other words, both continents have had the same shift in demand towards skill; in the US relative wages have adjusted and in Europe not. The implication of this hypothesis is that in Europe the unemployment rate for the unskilled will have risen but the unemployment rate for the skilled will have fallen. In fact it has risen. To investigate the hypothesis more systematically we develop an internally consistent model which allocates the change in a country's unemployment between that resulting from (a) shifts in relative demand for skill minus shifts in relative supply, (b) shifts in the relative intercepts of skilled and unskilled wage functions, (c) shifts in aggregate wage pressure. We show that the rise in British unemployment relative to the US since the 1970s is almost certainly due to shifts in aggregate wage pressure. Similarly for 5 other European countries the combination of (a) and (b) accounts for none of the increase in unemployment since the 1970s.