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The chapter explores the role of law in society and its relation to ethical conflicts as reflected through the prism of the film The Third Man. By focusing on the complexities of life in post-war Vienna, the film exposes dilemmas that prevail in ordinary times and in functioning democracies as well. Our analysis suggests that one way to manage these dilemmas and balance the conflicting loyalties and interests they raise is to sustain open channels between the law and other narrative-generating practices from which normative stances are evaluated. The law-and-cinema discourse is one such channel and The Third Man presents, in our eyes, the vitality of that channel, due to its rich aesthetical language and its unique representation of the ethical tensions (and their consequences) in the modern era.

Land is the basis for economic development as well as tourism development. There is a close relationship between tourism development and the land market. However, research on the effect of tourism development on land prices is insufficient. This paper aims to investigate the effect and mechanism of tourism development on land prices.

The econometric paradigm is the main research method. Fixed effect models, instrumental variable models and mediating effect models are introduced to examine the impact of tourism development on land prices. The data include three types: land transaction data, city-level data and scenic spot data. More than 360,000 samples of land transactions for 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2021 are applied.

Tourism development can significantly increase land prices. This conclusion holds after using instrumental variables to address endogeneity and testing for robustness. Meanwhile, tourism development’s effect on land price is influenced by land type, city type, city tier and city location. The land price increase effect of tourism is more significant for tourism land, tourist cities, central cities and Western cities. The paper also reveals the mechanisms of the public service enhancement effect, infrastructure upgrading effect and environmental optimization effect in tourism development’s effect on land price.

The study contributes to the literature on the relationship between tourism development and land market. The generality and specificity of tourism development’s effect on land price are revealed from the micro and macrolevel research level. The findings enrich the literature on tourism price effects, point to rational ways to optimize and regulate land prices and provide new ideas for land-market development.

Despite an increasing policy focus, routine outcome monitoring (ROM) is not common practice in UK children's services. This paper aims to examine whether it is feasible and valid to use measures from ROM of evidence-based parenting programmes (EBPPs) to assess the impact of services and to drive service improvements through feedback mechanisms.

This is a secondary analysis of ROM measures collected from a London clinic offering EBPPs over five years. Demographic information from referrals was compared for attendees and non-attendees. Changes in parent reported child behaviour were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS).

No significant differences were found in socio-demographic characteristics of attendees and non-attendees. Statistically significant differences were found between pre- and post-scores on parent reported SDQ scores and VAS concerns, as well as the SDQ Added Value Score. The data collected did not allow for investigation of a dose-response relationship between the level of attendance and any improvement made.

This study illustrates that ROM can provide useful information about the impact of EBPPs in a particular clinical context. Demographic data could support service managers to evaluate reach and uptake while evidence of improvements can be communicated back to parents and support future funding bids. Incomplete data limited the inferences that could be drawn, and collaborations between research centres and clinics may be a way to optimise the use of ROM to drive service improvement and innovation.

There is a lack of valid and reliable generic measures of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) for children under eight. The purpose of this paper is to assess the psychometric properties of the newly formulated Quality of Life Scale for Children (QoL-C), which uses a pictorial response format.

In total, 335 primary school children completed the QoL-C on two occasions, two weeks apart. Children aged four to seven were interviewed one-to-one while children aged eight to nine completed the measure as a class activity. Test-re-test reliability, convergent validity and child-parent concordance were assessed.

Only one child refused to complete the QoL-C, which suggests the measure is user-friendly. Test-re-test reliability was moderate for the measure's total score (intraclass correlation coefficient =0.48, 95 percent CI 0.39, 0.57) but low to fair for individual items (K from 0.13 to 0.37). Internal consistency was moderate (α=0.42 time one, 0.53 time two). A small significant correlation was found between the QoL-C and Child Health Meter in the expected direction (r=−0.32), suggesting convergent validity. There was low concordance between the children's QoL-C responses and parent's responses (r=0.19) to a parallel measure.

The results suggest that further development of this measure is needed. However, the findings indicate that one-to-one support increases the reliability of very young children's responses. The use of pictures, emoticons and minimal text used in the QoL-C should be investigated further.

Low parent-child concordance underscores the importance of younger children getting the opportunity to share their views about their HRQoL.

The Chinese government launched the “going abroad” policy in 2001 to encourage Chinese companies to invest and create Chinese brands in international markets. However, the perceptions of Chinese brands among Western consumers have been shown to be consistently low, especially among European consumers. This research aims to investigate the Irish consumers' perception of Chinese brands and how to improve the “Made in China” image. This paper also investigates consumers' perceptions and attitudes when making purchase decisions for Chinese brands based on gender, age, and nationality. The paper provides important recommendations for Chinese companies who plan to enter the European, and more particularly, the Irish market.

The purpose of this study was to explore whether a “value-action gap” exists between what members of the adolescent Generation Z (Gen Z) cohort value and how they act by investigating their actions related to sustainable and responsible fashion consumption (SRFC). Specific focus was placed on understanding these actions across the apparel consumption cycle, ranging from the acquisition, to use and disposal stages.

Forty-one members of Gen Z (20 males and 21 females) ranging in age from 15 to 18 participated in a total of seven focus groups.

Three emergent themes were identified and used to structure the interpretation: unintentionally sustainable, a knowledge conundrum and perceived barriers.

The majority of focus group participants were Caucasian, and all were teenagers from a single geographical area in the Southeastern USA. Findings provided by this study offer insight regarding the SRFC habits of Gen Z relative to their concerns regarding sustainability and social and environmental responsibility.

Findings offer practitioners an opportunity to better understand how to address the needs of this generational cohort as they progress through adulthood.

Findings of this study investigate the value-action gap to offer insight into how adolescent members of Gen Z make consumption decisions, and specifically within a framework of the apparel consumption cycle as a whole, including acquisition, use and disposal. Findings also reveal some of their more general views on SRFC.

This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of PhD support groups as an intervention that improves mental well-being and increases confidence in timely PhD completion.

Participants of six PhD support groups, which we co-facilitated, completed a survey at the start of the intervention and at the end of the eight weeks of attendance. The survey measured subjective well-being and confidence in completion using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and statements from the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (2017 and 2019). The final survey also included open-ended questions to identify the helpful factors of the intervention.

Participants’ subjective well-being scores increased considerably over the eight weeks of group attendance and improved from initial score ranges associated with risk of depression or psychological distress. As a result of feeling understood and supported by other group members, participants felt less isolated and anxious, were more satisfied with their life and work-life balance, and felt more confident about completing their PhD within the institutional time frame. The results confirm previous findings on the positive effects of social support and the relationship between poor well-being and attrition.

Support groups could form an integral part of university support as they increase well-being and could improve retention.

Existing literature mainly highlights factors that affect postgraduate researchers’ well-being, with limited research on innovative interventions. This paper investigates the impact of social support in a facilitated peer group that focuses on the emotional and psychological aspects of the PhD experience, rather than peer group learning or support with specific research tasks.

This paper first examines how changes in the real effective exchange rate and its volatility affect the exporting activities of firms. Next, it investigates whether exchange rate volatility (EXRV) affects the export behavior of financially constrained and unconstrained firms differently. Finally, it examines the role of financial development in mitigating the effects of EXRV and financial constraints on firms' exports.

The empirical analysis of the paper is based on a wide panel of Pakistani nonfinancial firms listed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange during the period 2001–2016. To mitigate the problem of endogeneity and to take into account the dynamic nature of the empirical model, the authors apply the robust two-step system-GMM estimator developed by Blundell and Bond (1998). To examine the role of credit constraints, firm-year observations are sorted as financially constrained and unconstrained based on the median value of three alternative measures: the liquidity ratio, the dividend payout ratio and the Whited and Wu (WW) index.

The results reveal that an increase in the real effective exchange rate has a positive and significant impact on firms' exports. However, the results show that the EXRV is significantly and negatively related to exporting decisions, suggesting firms considerably decrease their exports during periods of increased unpredictable variations in exchange rates. The findings also suggest that compared to financially constrained firms, the adverse effect of EXRV on exports is weaker for financially unconstrained firms. This finding implies that firm-level financial constraints unfavorably impact exports by making exporting more sensitive to the EXRV. Finally, the findings indicate that financial development not only positively affects firms' exports but also plays a vital role in declining the adverse effects of EXRV on firm-level exports. Specifically, the results show that financial development decreases the negative impact of EXRV on exports for both financially constrained and unconstrained firms. However, the moderating role of financial sector development is higher for financially unconstrained firms.

Notwithstanding that the authors present robust and strong empirical evidence of the effects of EXRV on exporting and on the role of both firm-level financial constraints and financial sector development in formulating these effects, there are some limitations of the study. The authors use a single proxy for measuring financial sector development. However, one may construct an index for the financial sector developed using principal component analysis (PCA) by considering different measures of financial development. The authors use three different measures of financial constraints. Nonetheless, more sophisticated techniques such as switching regression can be used to endogenously determine whether firms are financially constrained. Moreover, an examination of the asymmetric effects of EXRV on exporting across different industries would also be worthwhile.

From a policy point of view, the results suggest that the development of the financial sector and the strategies to lessen credit constraints faced by firms will help in mitigating the adverse effects of the EXRV on the exporting behavior of firms in Pakistan. The findings also suggest that managers in financially constrained firms should apply appropriate hedging strategies to hedge exchange rate risks. Finally, the findings suggest that investors should take into consideration exchange rate dynamics and firms' financial constraints while investing in exporting firms' stocks.

Since the findings suggest that financially constrained firms' exports are more exposed to EXRV, managers of such exporting firms are suggested to apply effective and suitable currency risk-minimizing hedging instruments for enhancing their exports. The government should also implement economic and financial policies in such a way that they should help in reducing volatilities of exchange rates and in turn, encouraging firms to export more. Definitely, any policy, at both government and firm level, favoring exporting and export-oriented growth will not only help in overcoming the problem of a persistent and wide trade deficit but also help society by providing more employment and investment opportunities.

Recently, Pakistan has experienced significant declines in foreign reserves, persistent political unrest and enlarged trade deficits. All these have increased the uncertainty about the exchange rate. Therefore, it is valuable to know the EXRV effects on firms' exporting activities. Second, Pakistani firms face more financial constraints, and thus, the influence of financial constraints in formulating the volatility effects on exporting would be worth exploring. Finally, no research has yet taken place to scrutinize the role of financial development in mitigating the adverse effects of EXRV and financial constraints on exporting activities. This paper provides firsthand empirical evidence on the role of financial constraints and financial sector development in formulating the EXRV impacts on firm-level exports in Pakistan.