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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the attributes of Blumenau city brand, from the residents’ perspective and its relation to their intention to remain living there.

This is a quantitative study using survey data collected from a sample of 417 subjects, stratified by neighborhood, income class, gender and age. The theoretical and methodological framework is the scale developed by Merrilees et al. (2009) and the FOCUS (2014) report about the self-image of the residents of Blumenau.

There is a positive relationship between the assessment of the attributes of the municipality and the residents’ attitude toward Blumenau brand. The study also verified a positive relationship between Blumenau brand assessment and the residents’ intention regarding their own future. In fact, the relative satisfaction of the respondents with the attributes of the city, as well as the positive socio-economic indicators, influenced the intention to stay in the municipality.

This work presents a methodological combination of the evaluation of city branding and the intention to remain living in a certain place. The study adds important information on the role of the residents on the process of city brand building, showing that besides the transient assessment, the intentions to remain in a place should be considered, given that such intent is linked to the image that residents have of the city.

Enhancing household consumption and reducing inequality are among the fundamental goals of many developing countries. The purpose of this study therefore is to disaggregate household consumption expenditure into food and non-food and, thus, decompose inequality into within- and between-groups.

The study adopts generalised entropy (GE) measures. Second, the study uses regression-based inequality decomposition to ascertain the determinants of inequality in food and non-food expenditure using household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as covariates.

The results show that non-food expenditure is the major source of inequality in household consumption expenditure in both urban and rural areas with inequality coefficients of above 0.6 compared to about 0.4 for food expenditure. The decompositions also show that within-group inequalities for non-food and food expenditure are, respectively, 0.97 and 0.365 using the Theil index, while between-group inequalities for non-food and food are, respectively, 0.016 and 0.035. Furthermore, the regression-based inequality decompositions show that variables such as living in rural areas, household size, household dwelling and household dwelling characteristics account for the significant proportion of inequality in food and non-food expenditure.

The policy implication of the findings, among others, is that policies should focus on addressing inequality within rural and urban areas, especially with respect to non-food expenditure than in inequality existing between urban and rural areas. These non-food expenditures include expenditure in education, health, energy, accommodation, water and sanitation.

Most existing literature on K9 units has focused on the relationship between police handler and canine, or questions about use of force. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between private donations to public police departments, an increasingly accepted institutional practice in the policing world, and K9 units. Specifically, the authors examine rationales for sponsoring and financially supporting K9 units in Canada and the USA.

The authors focus on four main themes that emerged in analysis of media articles, interview transcripts, and the results of freedom of information requests.

These four rationales or repertoires of discourse are: police dogs as heroes; dogs as crime fighters; cute K9s; and police dogs as uncontroversial donation recipients.

After drawing attention to the expanding role of police foundations in these funding endeavors, the authors reflect on what these findings mean for understanding private sponsorship of public police as well as K9 units in North America and elsewhere. The authors draw attention to the possibility of perceived and actual corruption when private, corporate monies become the main channel through which K9 and other police units are funded.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of changes in creditors' priority defined by the bankruptcy law on firms' capital structure.

Taking advantage of the Brazilian bankruptcy law reform as an experiment and using publicly traded firms' balance sheet data, it compares Brazilian firms capital structure before and after the new law, using fixed‐effects panel regression. The empirical results are in line with theories that predict the effects on the capital structure due to changes in creditors' expectations.

This paper finds evidence of an increase in the debt portion of the capital structure.

The paper contributes the law and finance empirical literature, pointing out that change in creditors' protection induces significant changes in the firms' financing policy.

The purpose of this paper is to study how several brands like Poulain, Liebig and Guérin have helped to disseminate the French roman national through their chromolithographs at the beginning of the 20th century. By doing so, the paper highlights the participation of brands in the co-construction of the French roman national, a historical narrative that articulates state-supported collective memories.

A total of 1,106 historical trade cards have been collected and analyzed. Historical studies of the roman national have been used as secondary sources to aid in the interpretation of the motifs conveyed in those chromolithographs.

Chromolithographic images produced by various brands at the beginning of the 20th century contributed to the roman national. They provide an ethnocentric, patriotic and linear view of history but are also crossed by political fault lines, opposing secular and Catholic visions of history.

The chromolithographs produced and disseminated by companies have so far only been analyzed as promotional tools, aimed at popularizing brands and stores. By studying roman national motifs, this paper helps us understand what role businesses have played in building other narratives and forging a national spirit.

China has witnessed low and stable consumer price inflation in conjunction with high and volatile food price inflation over the past decade. The purpose of this paper is to examine questions about whether or not the link between consumer price inflation and food price inflation has weakened and the determinants of consumer price inflation.

This paper explores these questions by estimating error correction terms for monetary and external sectors using the Johansen cointegration method.

Empirical results suggest that the link between consumer price inflation and food prices has not been weakened, food price inflation, especially cereal price inflation, remains a significant driving force for overall consumer price inflation, and international food prices also play a significant role in determining China's inflation dynamics.

The paper construct a multivariate dynamic model that features the link between consumer price inflation and its potential driving variables. It also develops error correction models for food price, non-food price and consumer price inflation, which can accommodate dynamic interactions among the underlying variables.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a sequential three-stage analysis of inflation persistence using monthly data from 11 inflation targeting (IT) countries and, for comparison, the USA, a non-IT country with a history of credible monetary policy.

First, the authors estimate inflation persistence in a rolling-window fractional-integration setting using the semiparametric estimator suggested by Phillips (2007). Second, the authors use tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identify effects of the regime switch and the global financial crisis on inflation persistence. The authors use the sequences of estimated persistence measures from the first stage as dependent variables in the Bai and Perron (2003) structural break tests. Finally, the authors reapply the Phillips (2007) estimator to the subsamples defined by the breaks.

Four countries (Canada, Iceland, Mexico, and South Korea) experience a structural break in inflation persistence that coincide with the implementation of the IT regime, and three IT countries (Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK), as well as the USA experience a structural break in inflation persistence that coincides with the global financial crisis.

The authors find that in most cases the estimates of inflation persistence switch from mean-reversion nonstationarity to mean-reversion stationarity.

Monetary policy implications differ between pre- and post-global financial crisis.

Global financial crisis affected the persistence of inflation rates.

First paper to consider the effect of the global financial crisis on inflation persistence.

Healthcare practitioners (HCPs) have a major responsibility in the prevention and early detection of oral cancer (OC). Accordingly, adequate training in this area will positively enhance healthcare practitioners' accountability towards their patients. The present study was conducted in Saudi Arabia with the objective of assessing HCPs' opinion vis‐à‐vis OC prevention and early detection.

A cross‐sectional survey was distributed among HCPs in six different settings in Saudi Arabia.

Totals of 41.2 per cent and 63.4 per cent of HCPs thought that they are adequately trained to perform an OC examination and to palpate the lymph nodes, respectively. Similarly, 33.2 per cent and 25.8 per cent thought that they are adequately trained to provide tobacco and alcohol cessation education for their patients, respectively. Of HCPs, 45.1 per cent thought they had a low level of knowledge and training in OC prevention and the early detection thereof, 53.6 per cent agreed that their knowledge about OC was not current, and 82 per cent were comfortable with referring suspicious lesions to specialists.

It appears that the current knowledge and training in OC prevention and early detection among HCPs in Saudi Arabia is not up to the desired level. Accordingly, it is suggested that OC prevention and early detection should be given the necessary attention when establishing new continuous education strategies in Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a relevant backdrop for the Worldwide Hospitality snd Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue on tourism challenges and solution in the Niagara region, and to present the key points discussed during the 2007 WHATT roundtable discussion in the Niagara region, Canada.

The approach of this paper is more a narrative one. It also draws data from a series of web sites to analyse the past and present performance of tourism.

This paper provides a historic perspective of the Niagara region and presented in the context of tourism in the world, Americas, Canada, and Ontario. Then it travels back to explain the origins of WHATT and its scholarly journey over the years. In capturing the essence of the 2007 WHATT roundtable discussion in Niagara, the paper provides a strong foundation for the other nine articles, which follow in this WHATT theme issue.

In a world of theories, this paper provides fresh perspectives on many relevant ideas by using original expert views. Readers who are interested in the Niagara region would benefit from this paper.

This intervention study outlines the continuing journey of a university towards its sustainability potentiality. We introduce the importance of sustainable development and link it to our intervention study of potentiality for sustainability from a Heideggerian phenomenological perspective. Through a case study of sustainability at New Mexico State University, we provide an insight into the development of a new dimension of university sustainability interface. This interface exists in terms of a dialogic of sustainability, as it relates to the balancing of competing needs, such as efficiency, heart, and brand identity. An important aspect of this interface is intervention, highlighting new possibilities for the top administrators regarding the university's goals and environmentalities. A qualitative and interpretive approach using ontological storytelling inquiry is employed. Data for the study were collected through in-depth interviews with university members from all hierarchical levels. This article raises interesting ontological issues for sustainability researchers, and has implications for strategy as practice.