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Scholarly communication in the U.S. has been closely examined in the past two decades by librarians because of the acceleration in costs of serial, scholarly communication. Specific disciplines of research have increased at unprecedented rates, namely the areas of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) publishing.

Standard estimation of ARMA models in which the AR and MA roots nearly cancel, so that individual coefficients are only weakly identified, often produces inferential ranges for individual coefficients that give a spurious appearance of accuracy. We remedy this problem with a model that uses a simple mixture prior. The posterior mixing probability is derived using Bayesian methods, but we show that the method works well in both Bayesian and frequentist setups. In particular, we show that our mixture procedure weights standard results heavily when given data from a well-identified ARMA model (which does not exhibit near root cancellation) and weights heavily an uninformative inferential region when given data from a weakly-identified ARMA model (with near root cancellation). When our procedure is applied to a well-identified process the investigator gets the “usual results,” so there is no important statistical cost to using our procedure. On the other hand, when our procedure is applied to a weakly identified process, the investigator learns that the data tell us little about the parameters – and is thus protected against making spurious inferences. We recommend that mixture models be computed routinely when inference about ARMA coefficients is of interest.

Purpose: The COVID-19 global outbreak has delineated a scenario characterized by lockdown measures, travel bans, unemployment, cancelled bookings and limited travel confidence and logistics, thus forcing many tourism destinations and related tourism businesses to cease operations either partially or totally. Empirical studies aiming to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism and hospitality industry, as well as deepen our understanding about the main response actions that tourism stakeholders consider to be relevant to cope with the crisis, are extremely relevant. This is even more true in the context of island tourism destinations, where little research has addressed these issues so far. This study was therefore carried out to contribute to filling this research gap by presenting and discussing findings of an empirical research conducted on the accommodation sector in the Island of Sardinia (Italy) with the aim to investigate the impacts that the COVID-19 outbreak has generated on their booking and employment recruitment. Further, it also aims to identify and examine the most important response actions accommodation providers are implementing to cope with the situation, and what type of interventions they think regional/national institutions should adopt to sustain them.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A convergent mixed-method approach (data validation variant) was applied on a sample of 300 complete questionnaires collected in the period 15-30 March 2020, which included 140 narratives to be used for content analysis.

Findings: Quantitative findings report high cancellation rates, a severe decline in reservations and a relevant downsizing in staff recruitment. Qualitative findings identify several macro-based (i.e., institutional) and micro-based (i.e., business) interventions. Macro-based interventions are related to financial, fiscal, health, welfare, transport, destination management and destination marketing aspects. Micro-based interventions are mostly related to innovation, sanitation and cleanliness and pricing/cancellation policies.

Originality/Value: The chapter adds to the still limited island-related research aiming to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism and hospitality industry and to deepen the scientific debate about the main response actions that accommodation providers consider to be relevant to cope with the crisis.

In recent years, a growing number of libraries have canceled or unbundled their “Big Deal” journal subscriptions – those subscriptions that include a full package of digital journal titles for one discounted cost. This started as an affordability problem but has slowly morphed into a challenge from libraries demanding a new pricing structure that accommodates and spurs the growing open access movement.

The change has caused a variety of challenges for technical services units including the increased need for user data, increasingly complicated workflows as they manage partial subscriptions, new interactions with consortia, and ongoing campus conversations. Whether the library is seeking to simply unbundle due to budget constraints, or push for new models such as “read and publish”, there is a tremendous impact on the work of technical services units.

This chapter will explore the rationale and growth of the Big Deal, how it is breaking, four case studies on breaking Big Deals, a brief discussion of new transformative agreements, new challenges for consortia, and implications for technical services units moving forward.

This chapter addresses the issue of the Global South external debt by mobilizing insights from Modern Monetary Theory, Ecological Economics, and Dependency Theory. It argues that the external debt problem of Southern governments is a reflection of their subordinate economic and monetary status. It shows why the argument of foreign currency shortage often used to explain the need for Southern governments to issue foreign currency debts remains superficial. In contrast to the usual focus on creditors, the chapter highlights the role played by foreign direct investment in the genesis of the chronic external indebtedness of most Southern countries. It argues then that the external debt of the South must be understood holistically not only as a manifestation of the unequal ecological exchange between the North and the South but also as an instrument that has contributed to reproducing and amplifying this pattern. Under these conditions, the cancellation or restructuring of the South's external debt stock and a few other unlikely concessions by the Northern countries will not be enough to abolish the “debt system.” This is an important lesson from the antiimperialist critique of the mid-1970s New International Economic Order (NIEO) agenda that current movements for Southern debt cancellation and Climate Justice would do well to remember.

Health care institutions in many Western countries have developed preoperative testing and assessment guidelines to improve surgical outcomes and reduce cost of surgical care. The aims of this chapter are to (1) summarize the literature on the effect of preoperative testing on clinical outcomes, efficiency, and cost; and (2) to compare preoperative testing guidelines developed in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

We reviewed the literature from 1975 to 2014 for studies and preoperative testing guidelines.

We identified 29 empirical studies and 8 country-specific guidelines for review. Most studies indicate that preoperative testing is overused and comes at a high cost. Guidelines are tied to payment only in one country studied. This is the most recent review of the literature on preoperative testing and assessment with a focus on quality of care, efficiency, and cost outcomes. In addition, this chapter provides an international comparison of preoperative guidelines.

This chapter uses data from the World Bank’s Private Participation in Infrastructure project database, and hand-collected evidence on project performance, to examine how PPPs are applied to infrastructure development in Africa, and how well they have delivered expected benefits. It has two analytical parts: an investment trend analysis and a meta-analysis of project performance and explanatory factors. The analysis shows growth both in number and volume of PPP investments that is weaker than that observed in other developing regions, and more volatile. The performance of PPP contracts appears to be improving over time with an overall cancelation rate of 7% over the assessment period. Although PPPs have contributed to increasing infrastructure stock, they have not completely met their potential, especially with respect to increasing infrastructure access rates. The main determinants of performance include accuracy of costing and allocation of risks, consistency of macro policies with the objectives and functioning of PPPs, coherence of sector policies and plans and local capacity. Contract cancellations are mainly explained by the misalignment of outcomes with government objectives, in particular, access and investment objectives. These findings suggest that PPP application should be well planned to ensure coherence of a wide range of policies, readiness of institutions and capacity of public sector actors. This chapter contributes to closing information gaps on a relatively novel policy instrument, and provides useful evidence to support prudent policy making at the time of considerable growth in PPP application.

Development has always been a global project. Since its inception, the construction of the development industry has been a project of ‘first’ and ‘third’ worlds, the ‘developed’ and the ‘under-developed’, the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ – one defined against the other. As Crush (1995, p. 5) states, “this industry is itself implicated in the operation of networks of power and domination that, in the twentieth century, have come to encompass the entire globe”. As development is a global project, it is necessary for us to think about the ways in which development actors, structures and dynamics operate at a global level. One of the more remarkable aspects of the development industry is the rise of networks in general, and of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) in particular. Networks have altered the development industry landscape, with development agencies and organisations utilising the network form.

Financial assurance rules, also known as financial responsibility or bonding requirements, foster cost internalization by requiring potential polluters to demonstrate the financial resources necessary to compensate for environmental damage that may arise in the future. Accordingly, assurance is an important complement to liability rules, restoration obligations, and other regulatory compliance requirements. The paper reviews the need for assurance, given the prevalence of abandoned environmental obligations, and assesses the implementation of assurance rules in the United States. From the standpoint of both legal effectiveness and economic efficiency, assurance rules can be improved. On the whole, however, cost recovery, deterrence, and enforcement are significantly improved by the presence of existing assurance regulations.