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This paper study regional attractiveness through passive portfolio investment based on duration, immunization and convexity (in case of higher interest rate volatility) of municipal bonds by using data from Standard and Poor’s. The massive variety of financial incentives to promote regional investment attractiveness is dependent on governmental strategy. Municipal bonds are the one of the most efficient ways of direct investments in the region, however, it is still a question of a good balance between a certain rate of return and an adequate risk. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the investment opportunities in municipal revenue bonds.

This study developed a model of investing using municipal bonds with the case of their immunization and analyze attractiveness of such investment. The theoretical model assumes a situation where the local government finances its capital projects through municipal revenue bonds. Such situations influence strongly on regional or local competitiveness provided by local government policy.

An analysis of the municipal bond market indicates that both municipal general and revenue bonds had stable and good level of yields to maturity in the past ten years. Their standard deviations were very low and in the past two years almost approached the level of standard deviations of treasury bonds. With the duration of 4–6 years on 5-year investment in municipal revenue bonds and their immunization, it is possible to provide good returns for investor.

The limitation of this study concerns theoretical situation where local government will use non-market-based policy to reduce the interest rates and that will influence on rise of municipal bond liquidity premium (price distortion). This situation will make municipality bonds less attractive for investing, especially because of lower liquidity on secondary market. Also, this model is applicable in regions that have developed financial markets.

This research suggests governments a sustainable framework to use municipal bonds as a strategy for capital targeting in regions.

This research is related to professional investors’ strategy with projects that have the highest investment potential; this is good way for an adequate allocation of resources (regional competitiveness).

This paper analyzes very rare subject involving local government strategy of finance and portfolio investment in municipal bonds. There is a huge gap in the literature on this issue. Also, this study provides the model that can be used as a case for higher local competitiveness.

Purpose – This chapter sketches the major historical shifts in American circumcision discourse and examines the sociopolitics of those shifts.

Methodology/approach – The chapter centers on a critical analysis of competing narratives and knowledge claims about circumcision. It re-examines these narratives and claims, most of which are packaged in a rhetoric of health, specifically for their political valence.

Findings – The medical necessity of circumcision in the United States cannot be ascertained without attending to the disciplinary systems designed to produce and maintain religious, sexual and other cultural norms.

Contribution to the field – The chapter provides a clear and focused synthesis of many different literatures and contentions about circumcision that have yet to be brought together into a single narrative accessible for students and scholars of the medical humanities and medical politics.

This chapter problematizes the body politics of American liberalism, as viewed through the lens of health policy. The author suggests that American efforts to pursue basic health goals are undercut by the particular way in which American liberals – and their state – conceptualize bodies. To understand the theoretical basis of this body politics, the chapter examines policy preoccupations such as the institution of informed consent, malpractice reform, and efforts to establish a Patients’ Bill of Rights. Finally, considering the ideological contexts that have given rise to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the author gestures toward the establishment of a stronger liberal – and possibly post-liberal – health care system that takes the embodiment of its subjects seriously.

The delivery of public services in developing countries is over‐centralised. One of the reasons for this is the presence of centralised decision‐making apparatus, which distances power from communities. The centralised decision making reduces accountability among public sector employees and is a good recipe for undesirable decisions and mismanagement of performance and resources at the expense of public service quality. The quality of public sector management in developing countries lags behind those of the developed countries due to the ills caused by over‐centralisation. Hence, the public services in developing countries are a drain on the wealth‐producing part of their economy. Reviews the underlying literature and theoretical framework of performance management (PM) as a systems‐based model for cultivating the “achievement culture” in public sector organisations (PSOs). It looks at how the various practical econometric and managerial techniques can integrate with the PM model in an attempt to excel the philosophy of new public management. The paper concludes by looking at the “new” role of management accounting systems in meeting “information needs” of modern public sector managers, as a potential area for further research. The paper proposes that the adoption of the PM model is a universal remedy for improving service quality in PSOs in developing countries.

Introduces a practical tool ‐ an international manufacturing configuration “map” ‐ for the identification of international manufacturing network patterns and assessment of related strategic capabilities. Describes the research work and its application‐oriented research method. Builds on the frameworks developed in different industries in the first stage of the project and explains how a “map” can represent typical international manufacturing network configurations and relationships. Introduces a practical process for using the map, involving the identification of current network configurations of main product lines and the strategic capabilities of the configurations. Presents an industrial example and describes its practical industrial application. Draws conclusions about the applicability of the technique and its potential as part of an understanding of international manufacturing system analysis and design.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men created through Men’s Groups/Sheds across urban, regional and remote areas of Australia. Men’s Sheds are a safe space, resembling a work-shop setting or backyard shed, where men are encouraged to socialise and participate in health promotion, informal learning and engage in meaningful tasks both individually and at the community level.

Explore five case study sites through Wenger’s (1998) active communities of practice (CoP). Qualitative methods are presented and analysed; methods comprise semi-structured interviews and yarning circles (focus groups). Five Indigenous leaders/coordinators participated in semi-structured interviews, as well as five yarning circles with a total of 61 Indigenous men.

In a societal context in which Indigenous men in Australia experience a number of social and health issues, impeding their quality of life and future opportunities, the central finding of the paper is that the effective development of social relations and socially designed programs through Men’s Groups, operating as CoP, may contribute to overcoming many social and health well-being concerns.

Contributions will provide a better understanding of how Indigenous men are engaging with Men’s Sheds, and through those interactions, are learning new skills and contributing to social change.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of cooking skill interventions (CSIs) targeting adults to improve dietary intakes in public health nutrition settings.

A scoping review of the literature was used to identify and assess the quality and effectiveness of Australian single-strategy CSIs and multi-strategy programmes that included cooking for independent healthy people older than 16 years from 1992 to 2015.

There were only 15 interventions (n=15) identified for review and included CSIs as single strategies (n=8) or as part of multi-strategy programmes (n=7) over 23 years. The majority of the interventions were rated as weak in quality (66 per cent) due to their study design, lack of control groups, lack of validated evaluation measures and small sample sizes. Just over half (53 per cent) of the CSIs reviewed described some measurement related to improved dietary behaviours.

There is inconclusive evidence that CSIs are effective in changing dietary behaviours in Australia. However, they are valued by policymakers and practitioners and used in public health nutrition programmes, particularly for indigenous groups.

This is the first time that CSIs have been reviewed in an Australian context and they provide evidence of the critical need to improve the quality CSIs to positively influence dietary behaviour change in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between the purpose of a loan and the type of debt covenants, separated into balance sheet-based and income statement-based covenants.

Using private loan deal observations obtained from the DealScan database over the period between 1996 and 2013, the authors classify the sample loan deals into three categories based on the purpose of borrowing, namely, borrowings for corporate daily operating purposes, financing purposes and acquisition and investing purposes. The authors conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis to test the relationship between the choice of financial ratios in a debt covenant and the purpose of a loan, controlling for financing constraints and other factors that have been identified as important to debt covenant analysis in prior studies.

The results provide evidence that the purpose of the loan is significantly associated with the type of debt covenants, suggesting that the lender and the borrower have considered the loan purpose when structuring their debt agreements. More specifically, the results indicate that the loans borrowed to fund acquisitions or long-term investment projects are more likely to have income statement-based covenants and less likely to have balance sheet-based covenants. In contrast, the loans borrowed for corporate daily operating purposes or financing purposes are more likely to contain balance sheet-based covenants relative to income statement-based covenants.

The authors show that loan purpose is significantly associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants. This result further illustrates ways in which accounting information improves contracting efficiency. The results are limited to the US market with its institutional structure. In future studies, it would be interesting to perform similar investigations on firms in other countries.

The findings contain important and economically significant implications indicating that loan lenders and borrowers agree to include different types of accounting information (that is, income statement- versus balance sheet-based financial ratios) in their loan covenants for different purpose loans.

Overall, the results provide important evidence regarding the connection between debt covenant structure and loan purpose. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on debt contract design (Dichev and Skinner 2002; Chava and Roberts 2008; Demerjian 2011; Christensen and Nikolaev 2012). Despite much interest in debt contract design, Skinner (2011) argues that there still exists incomplete knowledge of the economic factors that structure debt contracts. Income statement-based covenants depend on measures of profitability and efficiency and act as trip wires that transfer control rights to lenders when borrowing firms’ performance deteriorates. On the other hand, balance sheet-based covenants rely on information about sources and uses of capital and align interests between borrowing firms and lenders by restricting the borrower’s capital structure. The authors show that loan purpose is significantly associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants. This result further illustrates ways in which accounting information improves contracting efficiency.

This study is the first to identify differences in trends over time for the use of income statement- and balance sheet-based covenants as it relates to different loan purposes. The authors build on prior research to examine the degree to which loan purpose is associated with the choice between income statement-based and balance sheet-based covenants.