Search results

This chapter presents projections of residential development in Wappinger Creek watershed of Dutchess County, New York in the Hudson River Valley. A spatial econometric model is developed based on data from a geographical information system (GIS) of county-level socio-economic trends, tax parcel attributes, town-level zoning restrictions, location variables, and bio-geophysical constraints including slope, soil type, riparian and agricultural zones. Monte Carlo simulation is employed to distribute spatially explicit projections of land-use change under various residential development scenarios. Scenario analysis indicates the likelihood of continued residential, decentralized development patterns in formerly agricultural and forested parcels. Policy scenarios demonstrate possible courses of action to direct development and protect watershed health.

Mandatory auditor firm rotation (mandatory rotation) has been a controversial issue in the United States for many decades. Mandatory rotation has been considered at various times as a means of improving auditor independence. For example, in the United States, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has considered mandatory rotation as a solution to the independence problem (PCAOB, 2011) and the European Parliament approved legislation that will require mandatory rotation in the near future (Council of European Union, 2014). The concept of implementing a mandatory rotation policy has been encouraged by some constituents of audited financial statements and rejected by other constituents of audited financial statements. Although there are apparent pros and cons of such a policy, the developmental process of such a policy in this country has not necessarily been an open-democratic, objective process. Universal mandatory rotation may or may not be the ideal solution; however, an open-democratic, objective process is needed to facilitate the development of a solution that considers the needs of all major stakeholders of audited financial statements – not simply accounting firms and public companies, but also investors. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine key issues relating to mandatory rotation and to encourage and stimulate future research and ongoing dialogue regarding this issue, in spite of efforts by certain constituents to silence the issue. This paper provides an overview of the various reasons, including practical, theoretical, political, and self-motivated reasons, why a mandatory rotation policy has not been implemented in the United States in order to address the potential conflict of interest between the auditor and client. This paper will also discuss how some deliberations of mandatory rotation have been flawed. The paper concludes with a summary of key issues along with two approaches for regulators, policy makers, and academics to consider as ways to improve the process and address auditor independence. The authors are not advocating for any specific solution; however, we are advocating for a more objective, unified approach and for the dialogue regarding auditor rotation to continue.

This paper draws upon the work of Georgescu‐Roegen to outline some theoretical alternatives to standard welfare theory, and to examine the policy implications of discarding the Walrasian core of neoclassical economics.

Current work in behavioral economics and game theory shows that economic behavior depends on social context, a point understood by social economists for a hundred years or more. This work is related to Georgescu's contributions to utility theory and bioeconomics.

Neoclassical welfare economics continues to dominate economic theory and policy even though its theoretical foundations, economic man and perfect competition, have been discredited by mainstream theorists. Economic processes take place in specific social contexts and also coevolve with the biophysical universe.

Although modern economics is incorporating many of Georgescu's insights about human preferences it has yet to come to grips with the fact that human economic activity is shaped by its biophysical context. It is believed this should be a major focus of future economic research.

Provides further insights into welfare theory and bioeconomics.

In the face of increasing resource insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, more governments and businesses are now embracing the concept of the circular economy. This chapter presents some historical background to the concept, with particular attention paid to its assumed opposite, the ‘linear’ or growth economy. While the origins of the circular economy concept are to be found in 1960s environmentalism, the chapter draws attention to the influence of the then ‘new’ sciences of ecology and ‘cybernetics’ in shaping the public environmental discourse of the period. It also draws attention to the background of the present linear economy in postwar policies that encouraged reconstruction and a social and economic democratisation across the West, including an expansion of mass-consumption. It emphasises the role of the 1960s counterculture in generating a popular reaction against this expansionary growth-based agenda, and its influence in shaping subsequent environmentalism, including the ‘metabolic’ and ecological economic understanding of the environmental crisis that informs the concept of the circular economy. Reflecting upon this historical preamble, the chapter concludes that more attention should be paid to the economic, cultural and social contexts of consumption, now more clearly the main driver of our global environmental crisis. Without now engaging more directly with the ‘consumption problem’, the chapter argues, it seems unlikely that the goals of the circular economy can be met.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of fathers in the management of sleeping problems in children with autism and their perspectives of the impact of these difficulties on family life.

Semi-structured interviews with 25 UK-based fathers of children with autism were undertaken.

Two-thirds of fathers reported that their children experienced severe sleeping problems in the areas of bed-time resistance, sleep onset and night-time waking. Fathers were significantly involved in the management of these difficulties and reported a range of associated deleterious impacts on the family, including significant negative effects on paternal and maternal health, father’s employment, couple relationship and sibling experiences.

The interview sample cannot be said to be representative of all fathers of children with autism since the backgrounds of those taking part were relatively homogeneous in respect of ethnicity, marital status and level of education.

Improvements in effective, family-centred provision are urgently needed which employ a co-parenting, gender-differentiated methodology.

Given the severity and frequency of difficulties, sleeping problems in children with autism should be viewed as a significant public health concern.

This is one of the first studies, qualitative or quantitative, to explore the role and perspectives of fathers of children with autism in the important area of sleep management.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the US society’s insignificant mitigation of climate change using Niklas Luhmann’s (1989) autopoietic social systems theory in ecological communication. Specifically, the author’s analysis falls within the context of Luhmann re-moralized while focusing on particular function systems’ binary codes and their repellence of substantive US climate change mitigation policy across systems.

The author achieves this purpose by resituating Luhmann’s conception of evolution to forgo systems teleology and better contextualize the spatial-temporal scale of climate change; reinforcing complexity reduction and differentiation by integrating communication and media scholar John D. Peters’s (1999) “communication chasm” concept as one mechanism through which codes sustain over time; and applying these integrated concepts to prominent the US climate change mitigation attempts.

The author concludes that climate change mitigation efforts are the amalgamation of the systems’ moral communications. Mitigation efforts have relegated themselves to subsystems of the ten major systems given the polarizing nature of their predominant care/harm moral binary. Communication chasms persist because these moral communications cannot both adhere to the systems’ binary codes and communicate the climate crisis’s urgency. The more time that passes, the more codes force mitigation organizations, activist efforts and their moral communications to adapt and sacrifice their actions to align with the encircling systems’ code.

In addition to the conceptual contribution, the social implication is that by identifying how and why climate change mitigation efforts are subsumed by the larger systems and their codes, climate change activists and practitioners can better tool their tactics to change the codes at the heart of the systems if serious and substantive climate change mitigation is to prevail.

To the author’s knowledge, there has not been an integration of a historical communication concept into, and sociological application of, ecological communication in the context of climate change mitigation.