A taxonomy of instruments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their interactions

Copyright: xymonau

The Economics Department of the OECD has released a paper reviewing alternative (national and international) climate change mitigation policy instruments and interactions across them. Carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, standards and technology-support policies (R&D and clean technology deployment) in particular are assessed according to three broad cost-effectiveness criteria.

Here is the abstract:

A taxonomy of instruments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their interactions
This paper reviews alternative (national and international) climate change mitigation policy instruments and interactions across them. Carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, standards and technology-support policies (R&D and clean technology deployment) in particular are assessed according to three broad costeffectiveness criteria, their:

i) static efficiency, defined to cover not just whether the instrument is costeffective
per se but also whether it provides sufficient political incentives for wide adoption;

ii) dynamic
efficiency, which implies an efficient level of innovation and diffusion of clean technologies in order to lower future abatement costs;

iii) ability to cope effectively with climate and economic uncertainties.

Multiple market failures and political economy obstacles need to be addressed in order to meet these criteria. In this regard, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes appear to perform better than alternatives. However, their cost-effectivenes can be enhanced through targeted use of other instruments. There is therefore room for climate policy packages.

Full Document

Joint Statement on Zimbabwe by the African Development Bank and the World Bank

"The African Development Bank and the World Bank Group welcome the power-sharing agreement signed on Monday in Harare as a potential opportunity for Zimbabwe to begin to deal with its mounting economic, social and governance problems.

We look forward to the completion of work on other details of the agreement. We also look forward to a demonstration that it can form the basis for tackling some of the most urgent human needs, especially of vulnerable women, youth and children, such as those arising from hyperinflation, and the food and fuel crisis.

As concrete progress is made on the ground, we would be ready to join other development partners in exploring a program of technical and, as appropriate, financial assistance."

More

University news from the West

Golden opportunities
As the Olympic flame departs Beijing 2008 and the world's attention shifts to London 2012, UK universities are looking forward to sharing the spotlight. Hannah Fearn reports
Judgment calls
Amid worries about examining practices, Times Higher Education asked ten academics to mark a first-year paper. Verdicts ranged from zero to a 2:1, but the markers identified an inherent consensus, says Rebecca Attwood
Reform unfair financial aid system, says Hepi
Report calls for national pool of fee income to end ‘market’ in bursaries
Staff may get a zero salary offer to avoid redundancies
Reports from the Universities UK conference

Graduate Enrollments Are Up, but Uneven
Gains are greater for foreign students than those from the U.S., for blacks than for whites, and for those studying in the health sciences than in other disciplines.
Graduate Enrollments Are Up, but Uneven
Gains are greater for foreign students than those from the U.S., for blacks than for whites, and for those studying in the health sciences than in other disciplines.
Sharing Your Notes Online -- and Getting Paid for It
A new Web site brings social networking and ad revenues to the traditional note-taking service, but the model could raise copyright issues. Knetwit, as it’s called, is a Web site that combines some familiar Web 2.0 features — user profiles, file sharing, online communities — with the goals of campus note-taking services. Students — or, potentially, professors — join the site for free and can post their notes, papers and other assignments that might be helpful to others. Depending on one’s point of view, that could be equivalent to study sessions or tantamount to cheating.


GLOBAL: OECD calls for greater internationalisation Karen MacGregor
Governments should position their higher education systems in the global arena, develop a strategy and framework for internationalisation and encourage institutions to be more proactive internationally, says an OECD report published last week. Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society offers this and other policy advice to countries striving to build tertiary education in ways that stimulate innovation, competitiveness and economic growth.

GLOBAL: What are universities for?
The enduring elements of the success of universities explain why, in a global economy, they are now regarded as crucial national assets. But a discussion paper released last Thursday says this has also resulted in a certain amount of "loose thinking" about the roles that universities can play in society, while obscuring their most important contributions to it.

US: Foreign students better at completing PhDs Philip Fine
International students in the US finish their PhDs at a higher rate than domestic students, according to the Council of Graduate Schools which has released results from the largest analysis to date of data on doctoral students.

NEW ZEALAND: New category of university rejected John Gerritsen
A parliamentary committee has advised against creation of a new category of tertiary institution aimed at bridging the gap between New Zealand's universities and polytechnics. The Education and Science Select committee delivered its report on a controversial Bill proposing creation of the 'university of technology' as a separate category of institution.

EUROPE: Radical new ICT approach needed Alan Osborn
The European Commission has launched a major consultation about the development of information and communications technology in the EU following indications that Europe is slipping further behind in the global technology race. The consultation runs until 7 November and is part of Brussels' far-reaching response to the so-called Ahu report issued this summer, which identified a number of key failings in European ICT research and innovation.



Higher Education Will Feel The Impact of Baby Boom Retirements steven bell
Higher education in particular will be faced with a significant number of faculty members and administrative staff retiring, and that number is only projected to rise over the years. To gain a firsthand perspective on how the baby boomer retirement phenomenon is projected to affect higher education, we spoke with two key decision makers at prominent Southern California institutions. When they do leave, the administrative staff and faculty members walking out the university door are veritable vessels of institution-specific knowledge. "You're losing the institutional history and continuity of teaching content that you've had over the years," Rushforth said.
Remedial Education Is Costly For IHEs steven bell
It's a tough lesson for millions of students just now arriving on campus: even if you have a high school diploma, you may not be ready for college. In fact, a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually.

Accountants - Beancounters or Market Drivers?

Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, addressed the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland during last week with his topic: Beancounters or Market Drivers? – The Role of the Reporting Accountant.

Here is an extract:

Two thoughts:

1. The tide of unfavourable criticism directed towards our profession has been rising of late and this has made many practitioners unhappy. They feel that things can never again be quite what they were. For a profession whose acknowledged standing is its sole raison d’être any criticism, however absurd, can cause unpleasant twinges of anxiety. (Arthur Morison) A major criticism is the measurement of profit.
   
2. In accountancy the term profit has no absolute meaning. It is simply a measurement of the success or failure of a business to achieve what it has set out to achieve. The measurement is a subjective one in so far as it depends upon the view taken as to what the business has in fact set out to achieve. Thus the term profit as used by accountants can never have that absolute meaning which lawyers, economists and Revenue officials seek to attribute to it.

The measurement is a subjective one in so far as it depends upon the view taken as to what the business has in fact set out to achieve. Thus the term profit as used by accountants can never have that absolute meaning which lawyers, economists and Revenue officials seek to attribute to it.

The absence of any absolute meaning to the term profit in accountancy, however, does not absolve the accountant from explaining what the word purports to mean in relation to the statement which he produces. On the contrary, the acknowledged empiricism of accountancy makes it absurd for accountants to talk of profit without definition

Moreover the very flexibility of the term profit as used in accountancy makes it essential for the accountant to have some personal [emphasis added] conception of how the success or failure of any particular business should be measured, some simple guide by reference to which it can be seen whether the chosen conventions are operating satisfactorily.

The test which accountants apply for this purpose, I suggest, is simply that of commercial common sense, the test of considering whether the pattern of profits thrown up over a period of years by the chosen conventions in fact reflects how the business ‘is doing’ during that period. The choice of conventions is subordinate to that test and no convention can over-rule it… (Robert Morison)

[Read the entire speech by downloading the PDF.]

Biggest Bankruptcies in the USA

The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy protection filling is the largest in US history, CNBC compiled a list of other costly bankruptcies:

1. Lehman Brothers
Pre-Bankruptcy Assets: $639 billion
Date Filed: Sept. 15, 2008

2. Worldcom
Assets: $103.9 billion
Date Filed: July 21, 2002

3. Enron
Assets: $63.4 billion
Date Filed: Dec. 2, 2001

4. Conseco
Assets: $61.4 billion
Date Filed: Dec. 18, 2002

5. Texaco
Assets: $35.9 billion
Date Filed: April 12, 1987

6. Financial Corp. of America
Assets: $33.9 billion
Date Filed: Sept. 9, 1988

7. Refco
Assets: $33.3 billion
Date Filed: Oct. 17, 2005

8. Global Crossing
Assets: $30.2 billion
Date Filed: Jan. 28, 2002

9. Pacific Gas and Electric
Assets: $29.8 billion
Date Filed: April 6, 2001

10. United Airlines
Assets: $25.2 billion
Date Filed: Dec. 9, 2002

Interestingly enough 8 of the 10 were occurred in the 2000's.

SA Development Indicators 2008 released

This 2008 edition of Development Indicators summarises data on trends mainly for the period up to the end of April 2008.

Like the previous edition, this year’s publication contains information sourced from official statistics, government databases and research by local and international institutions, which has been clustered into ten broad themes:

• Economic Growth and Transformation
Incl. GDP, FDI, CPI, Bond points spread, SA's competitiveness, Knowledge-based economic outlook etc

• Employment
Incl. Employment/Unemployment and Expanded public works programme (EPWP)

• Poverty and Inequality
Incl. Per capita income, Living standards, Inequality measures, Poverty gap analysis etc

• Household and Community Assets
Incl. Water, Sanitation, Electricity etc.

• Health
Incl. Life expectancy, Mortality, HIV prevalence etc.

• Education
Incl. Educator - learner ratio, Enrolment, Senior certificate pass rate, Matriculants with mathematics passes etc.

• Social Cohesion
Incl. Strength of civil society, Voter participation, Confident in a happy future for all races, Identity based on self-description, Pride in being South African etc.

• Safety and Security
Incl. Number of all crimes, Contact crime, Property crime, Detection rate, Charges referred to court, Conviction rate, Inmates, Road accidents etc.

• International Relations
Incl. Peace operations, Democratically elected governments in Africa, Real GDP growth in Africa, Tourism, Mission operations and diplomats trained, International agreements

• Good Governance
Incl. Tax returns, Audits, Corruption perceptions, Budget transparency, Public opinion on delivery of basic services, Ease of doing business, Green house gas emissions, Demographic data

Each indicator is summarised in terms of policy goal, data table and/or graph, and trend analysis.

Lehman to file for bankruptcy

Copyright www.daylife.com

Here are some news results regarding the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers, a global investment bank:

Lehman Brothers sunk, Merrill Lynch sold National Post, Canada

Fuld's Subprime Bets Fueled Lehman Profits, Undermined Survival Bloomberg

Lehman Goes To The Wall Forbes, NY

Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy as credit crisis bites Telegraph.co.uk,

Lehman to declare bankruptcy Moneyweb

Research leading to (financial) rewards

Copyright laurenced

Which universities get the most bang for their research buck? Forbes Entrepreneurship assembled a list of the top 15, based on a 2006 survey (the most recent data) of 189 schools by the Association of University Technology Managers, which tracks university-born patents and licensing revenues. (Stevens came in at number three; Stanford, number nine.)

Total research-related income generated by all 189 schools: $1.5 billion.

University news from Africa

SOUTH AFRICA: Report warns of freedom inroads Karen MacGregor
An exhaustive probe into institutional autonomy and academic freedom by a task team of South Africa's advisory Council on Higher Education has found that government's steering of universities has "grown more directive, less consultative, and occasionally prone to hierarchical decree". It proposes a range of actions including greater commitment on the part of the government to negotiating with universities on planning and funding.

SOUTH AFRICA: Race debacle vc resigns Karen MacGregor
Six months after a racist video showing white Afrikaner students abusing cleaners at the University of the Free State hit the headlines and prompted international outrage, the vice-chancellor has resigned. Professor Frederick Fourie said stress caused by political divisions and tensions in the university council and community had been "extremely draining" and he was stepping down "in the interest of transformation" and development at the university.




ZIMBABWE: Three students targeted for sanctions Clemence Manyukwe
Canada has slapped targeted sanctions on three Zimbabwean university students whose parents are accused of propping up the regime of dictatorial President Robert Mugabe. They are the first students to appear on a Canada list that now features some 180 politicians, entities and officials, spouses and children targeted for travel restrictions and an assets freeze.


ZIMBABWE: Economic crisis keeps universities closed Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwe's public universities have failed to re-open due to an escalating economic crisis, student unions have confirmed. Most universities were supposed to open last month or early this month, but lecturers have either gone on strike or there are no funds for operations.


NIGERIA: Polytechnics and colleges to award degrees Tunde Fatunde
Selected polytechnics and colleges of education will soon be upgraded to award university degrees, Nigerian Minister of State for Education Hajiya Aishatu Dukku has announced. Dukku said adequate funds would be made available to employ university-level teachers and upgrade infrastructure at the institutions. One of the main objectives of the reform is to create additional avenues for would-be students in a country where hundreds of thousands of qualified school-leavers are unable to clinch university places each year.


ZAMBIA: Third public university opens Clemence Manyukwe
Zambia's third public degree-awarding university began admitting its first intake of students last week. The new institution, established earlier this year after the National College for Management and Development Studies in Kabwe was converted into Mulungushi University, should help to ease congestion at the country's other two state-owned institutions of higher learning, the University of Zambia and Copperbelt University.


BURKINA FASO: Ouagadougou University reopens
A two-month crisis at the University of Ouagadougou is over, with students resuming their courses this month following concessions by the authorities to some of their demands. The campus was abruptly closed in June, after violent clashes between police and protesting students (see University World News, 20 July 2008).


DR CONGO: New technology university opens
A new university specialising in technology, the Université de Technologie du Congo, has opened in the Kinshasa suburb of Limete, Le Potentiel of Kinshasa reported. The establishment, officially opened on 1 September, will provide initial and continuing engineering courses in science and technology, together with studies in human and social sciences.

Yet another HE report is released

This time the OECD has released their Education at a Glance 2008:OECD Indicators report enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance.

It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of 28 indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally.

The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and at the results achieved. The latter includes indicators on a wide range of outcomes, from comparisons of students’ performance in key subject areas to the impact of education on earnings and on adults’ chances of employment

Highlights include:

• Meeting a rapidly rising demand for more and better education is creating intense pressures to raise spending on education and improve its efficiency.
• The total amount of public spending on educational institutions rose in all OECD countries over the last decade, on average by 19% between 2000 and 2005 alone, and in Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland and Korea by more than twice that amount.
• Another visible indication of the efforts governments are making can be seen in the fact that, over the last decade, the share of public budgets devoted to education grew by more than one percentage point – from 11.9% in 1995 to 13.2% in 2005

New reference book with historical economic/financial statistics

Copyright kikashi

International Historical Statistics; Africa, Asia and Oceania 1750-2005 is the latest edition of the most authoritative collection of statistics available.

It is available in our Reference collection at HG2 MITC (this means that you won't be able to take the book out, however, you can make photocopies)

Updated to 2005 wherever possible, it provides key economic and social indicators for the last 255 years, serving as an essential reference source.

Contents provides:

• statistical data in easy to use tables
• for the last 255 years (where available)
• of every country in the African, Asian and Australiasian continents

Covering:

• Population & Vital Statistics

Includes population of countries at enumerations, by sex and age groups, of major cities, vital statistics, international migrants

• Labour Force

Includes economically active population, unemployment, industrial disputes, indices of wages/earnings

• Agriculture

Main arable food crops; various foodstuff outputs; livestock, exports of various agricultural commodities

• Industry

Includes coal , crude petroleum, natural gas and iron ore production; assembly of motor vehicles, imports & exports

• External Trade

Includes aggregate current values, main trading partners and major commodity exports

• Transport & Communication

Includes length of railway open lines, freight/passenger traffic on railways, merchant ships registered, motor vehicles in use, civil aviation traffic, postal/telegraph traffic, radio/tv sets in use

• Finance

Includes currency/banknotes in circulation, demand deposits in commercial banks, savings, money supply, total central government expenditure,central government revenue (tax yields)

• Prices

Includes wholesale and consumer price indices

• Education

Includes number of children schools and higher education

• National Accounts

Includes national accounts totals , proportions of GDP by sector of origin, balance of payments

ScienceDirect's Hottest Articles April-June 2008

Every 3 months ScienceDirect distributes a list of the Top 25 Hottest articles published with in a specific subject area.

Here is the newest list available for Economics, Econometrics & Finance for the time period: April - June 2008. (For some reason Accounting articles are grouped with Business & Management - for the list of hottest articles that include Accounting please click here.)


Australian gold exploration 1976-2003 • Article Resources Policy, Volume 30, Issue 1, 1 March 2005, Pages 29-37Huleatt, M.B.; Jaques, A.L.
Cited by Scopus (3)

Exploration and discovery of Australia's copper, nickel, lead and zinc resources 1976-2005 • Article Resources Policy, Volume 30, Issue 3, 1 September 2005, Pages 168-185Jaques, A.L.; Huleatt, M.B.; Ratajkoski, M.; Towner, R.R.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Market efficiency, long-term returns, and behavioral finance • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 49, Issue 3, 1 September 1998, Pages 283-306Fama, E.F.
Cited by Scopus (395)

Investor protection and corporate governance • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 58, Issue 1-2, 1 January 2000, Pages 3-27La Porta, R.; Lopez-de-Silanes, F.; Shleifer, A.; Vishny, R.
Cited by Scopus (321)

How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth? • Article Journal of International Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, 1 June 1998, Pages 115-135Borensztein, E.; De Gregorio, J.; Lee, J.-W.
Cited by Scopus (261)

Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? • Article World Development, Volume 32, Issue 4, 1 April 2004, Pages 567-589Wade, R.H.
Cited by Scopus (53)

Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issue 1-3, 1 September 2001, Pages 405-440Healy, P.M.; Palepu, K.G.
Cited by Scopus (181)

The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 60, Issue 2-3, 1 May 2001, Pages 187-243Graham, J.R.; Harvey, C.R.
Cited by Scopus (215)

The price of innovation: new estimates of drug development costs • Article Journal of Health Economics, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 March 2003, Pages 151-185DiMasi, J.A.; Hansen, R.W.; Grabowski, H.G.
Cited by Scopus (546)

The curse of natural resources • Article European Economic Review, Volume 45, Issue 4-6, 1 May 2001, Pages 827-838Sachs, J.D.; Warner, A.M.
Cited by Scopus (120)


Performance management: a framework for management control systems research • ArticleManagement Accounting Research, Volume 10, Issue 4, 1 December 1999, Pages 363-382Otley, D.
Cited by Scopus (85)

Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues • Article Ecological Economics, Volume 65, Issue 4, 1 May 2008, Pages 663-674Engel, S.; Pagiola, S.; Wunder, S.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Understanding cultures and implicit leadership theories across the globe: an introduction to project GLOBE • Article Journal of World Business, Volume 37, Issue 1, 1 March 2002, Pages 3-10House, R.; Javidan, M.; Hanges, P.; Dorfman, P.
Cited by Scopus (54)


Capital markets research in accounting • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issue 1-3, 1 September 2001, Pages 105-231Kothari, S.P.
Cited by Scopus (139)

Low-frequency collection of materials disassembled from end-of-life vehicles • Article International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 111, Issue 2, 1 February 2008, Pages 209-228Krikke, H.; le Blanc, I.; van Krieken, M.; Fleuren, H.


Design for control: A new perspective on process and product innovation • Article International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 113, Issue 1, 1 May 2008, Pages 346-358Bordoloi, S.; Guerrero, H.H.

Economic consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 44, Issue 1-2, 1 September 2007, Pages 74-115Zhang, I.X.
Cited by Scopus (7)

Oil prices, inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated VAR model for the G-7 countries • Article Energy Economics, Volume 30, Issue 3, 1 May 2008, Pages 856-888Cologni, A.; Manera, M.
Cited by Scopus (2)

The balance on the balanced scorecard a critical analysis of some of its assumptions • Article Management Accounting Research, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 March 2000, Pages 65-88Norreklit, H.
Cited by Scopus (93)

Corporate governance and firm cash holdings in the US • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 87, Issue 3, 1 March 2008, Pages 535-555Harford, J.; Mansi, S.A.; Maxwell, W.F.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Corporate governance and pay-for-performance: The impact of earnings management • Article Journal of Financial EconomicsCornett, M.M.; Marcus, A.J.; Tehranian, H.


Technological innovation systems and the multi-level perspective: Towards an integrated framework • Article Research Policy, Volume 37, Issue 4, 1 May 2008, Pages 596-615Markard, J.; Truffer, B.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Financial distress and corporate risk management: Theory and evidence • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 87, Issue 3, 1 March 2008, Pages 706-739Purnanandam, A.


Do firms manage earnings to meet dividend thresholds? • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, 1 March 2008, Pages 2-26Daniel, N.D.; Denis, D.J.; Naveen, L.

Consumer acceptance, valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food: Review and implications for food policy • Article Food Policy, Volume 33, Issue 2, 1 April 2008, Pages 99-111Costa-Font, M.; Gil, J.M.; Traill, W.B.

Fannie and Freddie Fixed ...

Copyright svilen001

Fannie And Freddie's 15-Month Fix
Maurna Desmond

It's been described as one of the largest government bailouts in U.S. history, but Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's four-pronged rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is merely a temporary solution, leaving a cloudy view on what the two mortgage giants will look like in the future.

The government seized the mortgage finance companies over the weekend in the form of a conservatorship, promising to buy the companies' preferred stock, buy mortgage-backed securities from their portfolios and provide a lending facility. What Paulson did not say: whether these companies will be permanently nationalized.

Instead, the plan calls for the run-off of their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities starting in 2010, which is a little more than 15 months away. That is about as much time the next Congress would need to come up with a permanent fix. More

University news from the West

Living the dream
Students' expectations of college life are formed long before they arrive, but blaming them for a lack of realism isn't the answer. Hannah Fearn reports


Tory promise: more students, more freedom
Shadow Minister says he wants a bold new direction for higher education

Students more satisfied than ever before
Most are happy with teaching, but assessment is still a concern

RAE table will be shaken by use of journal rankings
Panel member says leaders who chose entries on impact factor may be surprised

‘MTV generation learns through fun’
Dull teaching styles risk losing students to online education, US innovator warns

Noddy management
Treat your staff to lashings of 1940s-style good sense and you jolly well won’t go far wrong, advises Enid Blyton devotee Sally Feldman


Grand masters of vinyl
Prog rock devotee Greg Walker takes an affecionate look at an intelligent and gloriously ambitious genre, and asks us to celebrate the era when rock’s dinosaurs roamed the Earth


Book of the week
Tara Brabazon acclaims a monograph of merit: Wendy Griswold’s Regionalism and the Reading Class



A Community College Divided
At Thomas Nelson, a president who outraged faculty elsewhere runs into trouble again — and leaves an institution split over priorities, race and right to dissent. more


In New Orleans, Move-In Day (Again)
As students return to Loyola U. campus after pre-hurricane evacuation, the campus is neat and the mood upbeat, but storm clouds loom (literally). more


Print Journalism Squeeze Hits Campuses
As newspapers across the country face declining revenues, student publications are feeling the brunt, too. more

Different Measures of Community College Outcomes
Six states test new set of performance measures in response to the limitations of the federal graduation rate formula.

EUROPE: Impact of sharp population decline Keith Nuthall
European academics are preparing to gather at a high-level conference to discuss the problems caused to higher education by a sharp decline in the European population. The debates at the European University Association conference come as the latest figures from the European Union statistical agency Eurostat confirm the number of young people in European countries is already shrinking and will get smaller

GLOBAL: Higher education expanding rapidly Diane Spencer
The higher education sector has expanded rapidly worldwide over the past decade, says the latest annual report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Education at a Glance 2008 shows that 37% of school-leavers went to university in 1995 whereas 57% on average now do in the 30 member countries of the OECD. In Australia, Finland, Iceland, Poland and Sweden, three out of four school-leavers go on to a degree course. The 500-page report also shows that public expenditure on higher education has increased but that private investment has risen even more.

GLOBAL: North America far ahead in new rankings Rebecca Warden
North American universities are the clear winners in the latest edition of of The Web Ranking of World Universities, published by the Spanish National Research Council or CSIC's Cybermetrics Lab. The council has US and Canadian universities between them accounting for 123 of the world's top 200 universities. Europe comes in a very poor second with 61 universities while the Asia-Pacific region manages a total of 14. The league table, produced twice yearly since 2004, ranks institutions according to the size and quality of their presence on the internet and its wider impact.


CANADA: Tuition-fee patchwork siphons students Philip Fine
Hundreds of bargain-hunting Canadian students have moved to Newfoundland and Labrador, a province with the lowest tuition fees in the country. The recent student migration is one of the strange things to emerge in a country where individual provincial governments fund university operations, while the federal government is relegated to observing the wild patchwork of varying fees.


UK: Students underestimate debts Diane Spencer
As the British university term is about to begin, new students are being warned not to underestimate how much they are likely to be in debt by the end of their courses. A survey from the National Union of Students reveals that prospective university students are underestimating the basic costs of living such as groceries, household bills and travel by nearly £450 (US$822) a year.


GERMANY: Studying too expensive Mike Gardner

Yet another damning report has been released on social background and studying in Germany. This time the Deutsches Studentenwerk or DSW, the country's student welfare organisation, has drawn attention to the fact that more and more school-leavers in Germany are choosing not to study owing to difficult financial hurdles. Even among the group with top marks in the Abitur higher education admission certificate, parents' income is clearly a decisive factor in career planning.

GERMANY: OECD statistics cause for concern Michael Gardner
German first-year student numbers appear to be stagnating, according to OECD statistics. The country is also performing poorly in terms of graduation figures, says the organisation's Education at a Glance 2008 report released last week. President of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK - the conference of higher education heads in Germany), Professor Margret Wintermantel, is worried that Germany is increasingly lagging behind other countries and has called for more funding for higher education.

SOUTH KOREA: KAIST conference attracts leading researchers Douglas Rogers*
The big-budget conference circuit with high-profile international speakers hits Korea in October. This year, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in Daejon, has got in early with a series of activities straddling the weekend, reflecting the dynamic leadership of the President, Dr Suh Nam-Pyo.



Universities Looking More Like Corporate Research Labs steven bell
University “tech transfer” offices have boomed from a couple dozen before the law’s passage to nearly 300 today. University patents have leapt a hundredfold. Professors are stepping away from the lab and lecture hall to navigate the thicket of venture capital, business regulations and commercial competition. None of these are necessarily negative outcomes. The primary concern is that its original intent — to infuse the American marketplace with the fruits of academic innovation — has also distorted the fundamental mission of universities.

Green Buildings And Alternative Energy Will Be Sprouting On Campus steven bell Five years ago, green residence halls or organic dining would have seemed like cutting edge improvements of a campus’ environmental impact, but no longer. The U.S. Green Building Council says 250 campus buildings have received its stamp of approval, a LEED certification, and another 1600 are on the way. Wind and solar power generation is taking off; even high-tech projects like greywater reuse are finding a home on some campuses. As everything from printing labs to public transport gets a greener lift, here are nine projects that stand out.
Studying Student Shopping Behavior...For Their Courses steven bell Most colleges and universities have fairly lenient drop/add policies. Students can drop a course well into the semester, and courses can be added during a short time window at the beginning of the semester or term. During that course add period, some students do course shopping. They sign up for a course, attend the first couple of sessions, then drop the course and replace it with another course. Some students course shop regularly and extensively. Researchers studied course shopping in urban community colleges—nine Los Angeles community college campuses, to be specific. They used data collected as part of a larger study of transfer and retention issues in urban community colleges. The researchers offer a variety of suggestions that might help students make those wise first choices.

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You can either mark certain articles and then click on Download Pdf's - or you can click on it without marking any items. (If no items have been marked you will get a pop-up stating that the first 20 articles will be downloaded.)

Step 2: Make sure the pop-ups are not blocked

Step 3: Click on the Download Pdf's link

Step 4: Choose the name of the file as well as where you want the pdf's to be downloaded to (e.g. flash drive, specific folder etc)





You can give your own naming convention to the list:


Once you are down naming the file and choosing a place for the pdf's you can see the status of the files as they are being downloaded



Once the download is complete you will see an icon of the pdf:


If you go to where you've saved the files you will see all of them are there:


I think this will save a great deal of time for researchers since you can still go on with the searching in ScienceDirect, while your files are being downloaded in the background.

USA's Higher Education's inflation index released

Copyright yirsh

The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) is an inflation index designed specifically to track the main cost drivers in higher education in the USA.

It is an essential planning tool for educational managers, enabling schools to project the future budget and funding increases required to maintain real purchasing power and investment. HEPI is issued annually by Commonfund Institute and is distributed free of charge to educational institutions.

HEPI is a more accurate indicator of changes in costs for colleges and universities than the more familiar Consumer Price Index. It measures the average relative level of prices in a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by colleges and universities each year through current fund educational and general expenditures, excluding research.

HEPI is compiled from data reported and published by government and economic agencies. The eight categories cover current operational costs of colleges and universities. These include salaries for faculty, administrative employees, clerical employees, and service employees, fringe benefits, utilities, supplies and materials, and miscellaneous services.

HEPI has been calculated every year since 1983 and includes inflation data going back to 1961. Since fiscal year 2002, HEPI has been based on a regression formula. In 2005, Commonfund Institute assumed responsibility for maintaining HEPI and calculating its annual rate of change.

Links to publishers for new books

Copyright david_ming

Time is almost running out to order new books for 2009 - and the Faculty still has about 38% of the book budget left.

Remember you will lose what you do not spend.

To help you choose new relevant titles, here is a list of publishers with links to their economic/accounting/finance books:

Blackwells:
Economics, finance, accounting

Cambridge
Economics, finance & accounting

Elsevier
Accounting
Economics

Institute of Economic Affairs
2008/9 catalogue

MIT Press
Economic, Finance & Business

Oxford University Press
Economics & Finance Catalogue 2008/9

Springer
Economics

Taylor & Francis
Economics
Accounting & Finance
Reference

Palgrave
Banking & Finance
Economics
Reference

Wiley
Economics, Finance & Accounting

New information on SARB website

The following publication has been added to the -South African Reserve Bank website:

• Quarterly Bulletin No 249 - September 2008
• Statement on the Governor's term of office Issued by Mr T T Mboweni, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank

Credit cards usage on the up in emerging markets

Copyright LotusHead

According to a new Forbes article, credit card usage is on the rise in the emerging economies of the world:

" The growth of credit card use in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe signals continuing financial development in these markets. However, the experience of South Korea in 2003 demonstrates that excessive growth in this type of consumer credit has the potential to threaten economic stability. In recent years, the credit card industry in emerging-market economies has expanded rapidly: --Between 2004-07, the number of credit cards in Brazil and Mexico more than doubled, while the number of cards in circulation in Poland tripled. --Russia has also seen major growth. --Outstanding credit card debt in India tripled over the same period. --In China, growth in the number of outstanding credit cards averaged just over 23% from 2004-07. It surged to nearly 93% in the first half of 2008. " For more on the article, click here.

For scholarly articles discussing credit cards and emerging markets click:

• here for articles from EbscoHost
• here for articles from ProQuest
• here for articles from ScienceDirect

Top 50 CEO's in Asia

Forbes Business just released a list of CEO's of the Top 50 companies operating in Asia: