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1 – 4 of 4Richard J. Culas and Kimsong Tek
The paper presents food and nutritional status and relevant policy objectives that can sustain food security in Cambodia. This paper aims to review Cambodia’s food security…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper presents food and nutritional status and relevant policy objectives that can sustain food security in Cambodia. This paper aims to review Cambodia’s food security situation over a period.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides an approach for selecting food security indicators in relation to both inputs and outcomes by drawing on a conceptual framework. National level data for the food security indicators are analysed over a period to provide trends in food and nutritional status.
Findings
Cambodia has not experienced drastic food insecurity yet, as most people are farmers and their livelihoods dependent on agriculture. Agriculture has maintained food availability in the country; however, there is a proportion of the population living in remote areas unable to obtain sufficient, safe, nutritious food. Landlessness, internal migration, rapid population growth, lack of education and skills, limited access to natural resources and agricultural land, poor health and infrastructure leave the people with inadequate employment opportunities, low capabilities and low productivity which in turn bring deeper poverty. Therefore, people are insecure, excluded and vulnerable to food deprivation.
Practical implications
To tackle the food security challenges, the Government of Cambodia focuses on food-based social safety nets in the sectors of education, nutrition and productive assets/livelihoods support, to enable longer-term, nationally owned food security solutions.
Originality/value
The paper draws conclusions using a range of recently proposed food security indicators and offers a perspective for policy formulation which may be of interest to development scholars and practitioners.
Details
Keywords
Eduardo Canabarro, Markus Finkemeier, Richard R. Anderson and Fouad Bendimerad
Insurance‐linked securities can benefit both issuers and investors; they supply insurance and reinsurance companies with additional risk capital at reasonable prices (with little…
Abstract
Insurance‐linked securities can benefit both issuers and investors; they supply insurance and reinsurance companies with additional risk capital at reasonable prices (with little or no credit risk), and supply excess returns to investors that are uncorrelated with the returns of other financial assets. This article explains the terminology of insurance and reinsurance, the structure of insurance‐linked securities, and provides an overview of major transactions. First, there is a discussion of how stochastic catastrophe modeling has been applied to assess the risk of natural catastrophes, including the reliability and validation of the risk models. Second, the authors compare the risk‐adjusted returns of recent securitizations on the basis of relative value. Compared with high‐yield bonds, catastrophe (“CAT”) bonds have wide spreads and very attractive Sharpe ratios. In fact, the risk‐adjusted returns on CAT bonds dominate high‐yield bonds. Furthermore, since natural catastrophe risk is essentially uncorrelated with market risk, high expected excess returns make CAT bonds high‐alpha assets. The authors illustrate this point and show that a relatively small allocation of insurance‐linked securities within a fixed income portfolio can enhance the expected return and simultaneously decrease risk, without significantly changing the skewness and kurtosis of the return distribution.
ANY report on the state of the nation today inevitably concerns itself with economic matters. There is the imbalance caused by the steep rise in oil prices. The dusty answers we…
Abstract
ANY report on the state of the nation today inevitably concerns itself with economic matters. There is the imbalance caused by the steep rise in oil prices. The dusty answers we are given about future prospects are a fragile platform on which to base present actions. The spectre of inflation haunts all of us constantly and the volume of unemployment worries many people.
Behzad Abbasnejad, Sahar Soltani and Peter Wong
Most educational institutions worldwide have shifted to online teaching and learning approaches to mitigate risks imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This causes several issues…
Abstract
Purpose
Most educational institutions worldwide have shifted to online teaching and learning approaches to mitigate risks imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This causes several issues, particularly in delivering the construction management (CM) courses which require site visits, interpreting technical drawings and developing 3D building models. This paper aims to identify the key strategies for online learning and teaching adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic and to investigate the implications for construction management education.
Design/methodology/approach
The research approach is twofold. First, the study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) through a synthesis of the existing literature to identify the key strategies and lessons learned about online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in tertiary programs. It also discusses their implications in the context of the construction management (CM) sector in particular. Secondly, the authors shared their hands-on experience as construction management course facilitators – using the autoethnography approach – during the COVID-19 crisis.
Findings
In addition to identifying the key strategies such as online course delivery and assessments, the paper critically discusses the barriers to online learning and teaching, including (1) the technological and infrastructure barriers; (2) required online teaching skills and competencies; (3) issues surrounding mental health and wellbeing; (4) lack of consistency in the online delivery of various courses in a given program (5) difficulties around students' engagement and (6) the course characteristics and requirements.
Originality/value
The study offers some implications and recommendations not only for educational institutions and staff but also for vendors of online course delivery software. To prepare educational institutions for future online course delivery, the paper proposes several strategies. These include developing a set of guidelines for online course delivery, incorporating online teaching training modules into the recruitment process for academic staff, applying agile and resilience teaching and learning methods, wellbeing and mental health support and continuously improving course features to adapt to the online environment.
Details