scholarly journals Towards Managing Visual Pollution: A 3D Isovist and Voxel Approach to Advertisement Billboard Visual Impact Assessment

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 656
Author(s):  
Szymon Chmielewski
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Quality Issue ◽  
Geometrical Quality ◽  
Visual Landscape ◽  
Landscape Quality ◽  
Visual Impact ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Visible Volume

Visual pollution (VP) is a visual landscape quality issue, and its most consistently recognized symptom is an excess of out of home advertising billboards (OOHb). However, the VP related research concerns landscape aesthetic and advertisement cultural context, leaving the impact of outdoor billboard infrastructure on landscape openness unanswered to date. This research aims to assess the visual impact of outdoor billboard infrastructure on landscape openness, precisely the visual volume—a key geometrical quality of a landscape. The method uses 3D isovists and voxels to calculate the visible and obstructed subsets of visible volume. Using two case studies (Lublin City, Poland) and 26 measurement points, it was found that OOHb decreased landscape openness by at least 4% of visible volume; however, the severe impact may concern up to 35% of visual volume. GIS scientists develop the proposed method for policy-makers, and urban planners end users. It is also the very first example of compiling 3D isovists and voxels in ArcGIS Pro software in an easy-to-replicate framework. The research results, accompanied by statistically significant proofs, explain the visual landscape’s fragility and contribute to understanding the VP phenomenon.

scholarly journals Quantity and quality of childcare and children’s educational outcomes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Blanden ◽  
Emilia Del Bono ◽  
Kirstine Hansen ◽  
Birgitta Rabe
Keyword(s):  
School Achievement ◽  
Additional Term ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Highly Qualified ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Quality Rating ◽  
Quality Of Childcare ◽  
The Impact ◽  
School Records

AbstractPolicy-makers wanting to support child development can choose to adjust the quantity or quality of publicly funded universal pre-school. To assess the impact of such changes, we estimate the effects of an increase in free pre-school education in England of about 3.5 months at age 3 on children’s school achievement at age 5. We exploit date-of-birth discontinuities that create variation in the length and starting age of free pre-school using administrative school records linked to nursery characteristics. Estimated effects are small overall, but the impact of the additional term is substantially larger in settings with the highest inspection quality rating but not in settings with highly qualified staff. Estimated effects fade out by age 7.

scholarly journals Do mergers and acquisitions affect information asymmetry in the banking sector?

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (12) ◽  
pp. 1521-1547
Author(s):  
John S. Howe ◽  
Thibaut G. Morillon
Keyword(s):  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Information Asymmetry ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Deal Completion ◽  
Asymmetry Measures ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the consequences of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on information asymmetry in the banking sector. Specifically, the authors look at whether specific firm or deal characteristic influence information asymmetry levels between insiders and investors, as well as the impact of recent regulation such as the Dodd–Frank Act.Design/methodology/approachThe authors decompose the M&A process into three periods (pre-announcement, negotiation and post-completion period) and document changes in the information asymmetry levels between insiders and investors through the M&A process. The authors capture changes in information asymmetry using six different spread-based information asymmetry measures.FindingsThe authors find evidence that information asymmetry increases following M&A announcement and decreases following deal completion. These findings are more pronounced for acquisitions involving a private target, all-cash deals and for mergers, as opposed to acquisition of assets. We find that overall, successful mergers improve the quality of the information environment, while failed deals degrade it. Additionally, the enactment of Dodd–Frank reduced the magnitude of the changes in information asymmetry during the M&A process. The results are important to regulators, policy makers and investors.Originality/valueTo authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that looks at the effect of bank M&As on information asymmetry as well as the effect of regulations on information asymmetry.

scholarly journals CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FOR THE ROMANIAN ECONOMY

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica-Violeta ACHIM ◽  
Sorin-Nicolae BORLEA ◽  
Codruţa MARE
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Corporate Governance Practice ◽  
Corporate Governance Quality ◽  
The Impact ◽  
A Company

Our finding contributes towards the understanding of movements regarding the adoption of corporate governance practice in emerging countries such as Romania and its impact on business performances of a company. We have developed two econometric models to assess the business performances of the companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange, in order to point out the impact of corporate governance on business performances. Our results are inconsistent for the period 2001–2011, but if we consider only 2011, the results document a positive correlation between corporate governance quality and market value of companies, such it is reflected by Tobin’s Q. Therefore, our results contribute to the studies relating corporate governance and business performances, as it confirms a positive relationship between the two variables which appears once the Romanian emerging economy has began to adopt the best corporate governance practices. Firstly, our research has important implications for managers in order to know that the adoption of the best corporate governance practices could contribute to the financial success of the firm. Secondly, the results are useful for any investor who needs to consider the quality of corporate governance as a good predictor for the best rate of return of theirs investments. Moreover, our findings have also implications on policy-makers and regulatory authorities in European developing countries and offer them a barometer of adopting the best corporate governance practices in European space.

Does location in a science park really matter for firms’ intellectual capital performance?

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Schiavone ◽  
Antonio Meles ◽  
Vincenzo Verdoliva ◽  
Manlio Del Giudice
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Capital ◽  
Firm Characteristics ◽  
Science Park ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Science System ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of being located in a science park (SP) on the level of a firm's intellectual capital (IC) performance. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of 183 Italian firms (i.e. 61 tenant and 122 non-tenant firms), and through the GLS technique, the authors regress the firms’ IC performance across various explicative variables including a dummy that discriminates tenant and non-tenant firms. Findings – Consistently with expectations, the results show that the location of a firm in a SP leads to improved IC performance. Moreover, the authors find that some other firm characteristics, such as size, age, and leverage, are important predictors of its IC-based performance. Research limitations/implications – The sample is small and the impact on performance might be biased by factors related to the regional context (e.g. level of industrialization, quality of education, and science system). Practical implications – Implications for policy makers: support the growth of firms in SPs especially in those industries full of firms with scarce performance in IC. Implications for SP managers: they could “sell” (in terms of marketing) to both entrepreneurs to attract and policy makers this result. Implications for institutional investors: they should look at SPs with greater interest to find high-quality firms and improve their screening activity. Originality/value – This paper aims to extend literature about factors explaining the level of a firm's IC performance and the current understanding of the impact of SPs at firm level.

scholarly journals Free Market Institutions and FDI Performance in Emerging Asian Economies

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Klimis Vogiatzoglou
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Market Institutions ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Asian Economies ◽  
Institutional System ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper examines long-term developments in the quality and efficiency of free market institutional systems across thirteen emerging economies from South, South-east, and East Asia over the 1995–2014 period. The paper also empirically assesses the impact of free market institutions on a country’s inward foreign direct investment (FDI) performance. We find that the free market institutional framework in most economies is still relatively inefficient, restrictive, and underdeveloped but has, nevertheless, substantially improved during the last twenty-year period. Our empirical results also indicate that a free market institutional system in a host-country is a factor that attracts inward FDI to emerging Asian economies by multinational companies. Consequently, policy makers should focus on further improving the quality of free market institutions.

scholarly journals A Hybrid Tool for Visual Pollution Assessment in Urban Environments

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khydija Wakil ◽  
Malik Asghar Naeem ◽  
Ghulam Abbas Anjum ◽  
Abdul Waheed ◽  
Muhammad Jamaluddin Thaheem ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pollution Assessment ◽  
Observation Point ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Complex Decision Making ◽  
Complex Decision ◽  
Developed World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Reliable Methods

With increasing focus on more nuanced aspects of quality of life, the phenomenon of urban visual pollution has been progressively gaining attention from researchers and policy makers, especially in the developed world. However, the subjectivity and complexity of assessing visual pollution in urban settings remain a challenge, especially given the lack of robust and reliable methods for quantification of visual pollution. This paper presents a novel systematic approach for the development of a robust Visual Pollution Assessment (VPA) tool. A key feature of our methodology is explicit and systematic incorporation of expert and public opinion for listing and ranking Visual Pollution Objects (VPOs). Moreover, our methodology deploys established empirical complex decision-making techniques to address the challenge of subjectivity in weighting the impact of individual VPOs. The resultant VPA tool uses close-ended options to capture the presence and characteristics of various VPOs on a given node. Based on these inputs, it calculates a point based visual pollution scorecard for the observation point. The performance of the VPA tool has been extensively tested and verified at various locations in Pakistan. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such tool, both in terms of quantitative robustness and broad coverage of VPOs. Our VPA tool will help regulators in assessing and charting visual pollution in a consistent and objective manner. It will also help policy makers by providing an empirical basis for gathering evidence; hence facilitating evidence-based and evidence-driven policy strategies, which are likely to have significant impact, especially in the developing countries.

Negligent Release Litigation: a Proposal for Procedural Reform

1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman G. Poythress
Keyword(s):  
Hindsight Bias ◽  
Simulation Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
Jury Simulation ◽  
Procedural Concerns ◽  
Procedural Reform ◽  
The Impact

Much of what has been written lately regarding tort reform has dealt with substantive as opposed to procedural concerns. This paper offers a preliminary proposal regarding procedural reform that would potentially correct for the hindsight bias in negligent release litigation and have application in other torts contexts involving transferred responsibility. The proposal for bifurcated trial proceedings is worthy of consideration by legal scholars and policy makers as a potential mechanism for ensuring fairness and improving the quality of justice. As a footnote, it might be added that social scientists might contribute to the assessment of the proposed bifurcation procedure by conducting jury simulation studies that investigate the impact of bifurcated vs. non-bifurcated procedures as a function of strong vs. weak evidence of clinician negligence in mock negligent release cases.

Social Media, who Cares? A Dialogue between a Millennial and a Curmudgeon

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (14) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Frank ◽  
Kaitlin T. Torphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Group Meeting ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Data Artifact ◽  
Broad Understanding

This is a dialogue between a curmudgeon and a millennial regarding the import of social media for education and for educational research. The dialogue emerged out of conversations the authors have had with policy makers, researchers, and practitioners over the last three years regarding the impact of social media on education (see teachersinsocialmedia.org). It was presented in the context of Kenneth Frank's research group meeting January 4, 2018. The topics covered include a broad understanding about what social media are and how they relate to teaching and curriculum; understanding about social media as a data artifact; a discussion about how social media platforms shape the interactions of participants; the quality of resources available on social media; why teachers engage in using social media; the lack of research on social media; and how social media may give teachers more power relative to the status quo. We invite you to follow along as these topics emerge in the authentic flow of a conversation. There are opportunities for reader participation on Twitter.

Private Dentistry: Why we need the Facts

2001 ◽  
Vol os8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Tim Scott ◽  
Ian R Massie
Keyword(s):  
Effective Management ◽  
Equitable Access ◽  
Real Situation ◽  
Dental Services ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Dental Practitioners ◽  
Dental Profession ◽  
The Impact

Rumour and speculation abound within the dental profession about practitioners withdrawing from the NHS to deliver more private dentistry. Due to an absence of effective monitoring or research into this issue the real situation is unclear. We decided to find out what proportions of the gross incomes of general dental practitioners in the East Riding Health Authority were generated by private dentistry. We also sought to establish if they perceived any differences between the quality of their private and NHS work. Our findings and the issues raised are considered for general dental practitioners, for people residing in the authority, and for managers and policy makers. We conclude that the effective management of the supply of NHS dentistry should include a method of systematic monitoring of trends in the delivery of private dental services and the impact on the availability of NHS care. Effective measures are also needed to influence the number and location of dentists in health authorities in England and Wales to ensure adequate and equitable access to NHS dentistry.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document