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Relative to the randomized controlled trial (RCT), the basic regression discontinuity (RD) design suffers from lower statistical power and lesser ability to generalize causal estimates away from the treatment eligibility cutoff. This chapter seeks to mitigate these limitations by adding an untreated outcome comparison function that is measured along all or most of the assignment variable. When added to the usual treated and untreated outcomes observed in the basic RD, a comparative RD (CRD) design results. One version of CRD adds a pretest measure of the study outcome (CRD-Pre); another adds posttest outcomes from a nonequivalent comparison group (CRD-CG). We describe how these designs can be used to identify unbiased causal effects away from the cutoff under the assumption that a common, stable functional form describes how untreated outcomes vary with the assignment variable, both in the basic RD and in the added outcomes data (pretests or a comparison group’s posttest). We then create the two CRD designs using data from the National Head Start Impact Study, a large-scale RCT. For both designs, we find that all untreated outcome functions are parallel, which lends support to CRD’s identifying assumptions. Our results also indicate that CRD-Pre and CRD-CG both yield impact estimates at the cutoff that have a similarly small bias as, but are more precise than, the basic RD’s impact estimates. In addition, both CRD designs produce estimates of impacts away from the cutoff that have relatively little bias compared to estimates of the same parameter from the RCT design. This common finding appears to be driven by two different mechanisms. In this instance of CRD-CG, potential untreated outcomes were likely independent of the assignment variable from the start. This was not the case with CRD-Pre. However, fitting a model using the observed pretests and untreated posttests to account for the initial dependence generated an accurate prediction of the missing counterfactual. The result was an unbiased causal estimate away from the cutoff, conditional on this successful prediction of the untreated outcomes of the treated.

The purpose of this research is to examine a downstream social marketing program that slows the typical decline in functional fitness and independence of adults over 55 with particular attention to the ROI and the efficiency of the program.

Within subjects quasi-experimental design.

The ExerStart program is cost-efficient and effective delivering an ROI of 33 per cent. The participants of the ExerStart social marketing program significantly improved functional fitness. Further, this program demonstrates that this result may be achieved with just four exercises rather than six.

A successful, cost-effective, high-retention social marketing program is outlined for social marketers who aim to increase the functional fitness and independence of adults over 55 years.

Two societal benefits, the first is that it provides direction about how to efficiently prolong the independence of adults over 55 years, and the second is that it decreases pressure and costs on the healthcare system. This may be useful for policy makers and social marketers alike.

The authors contribute to the literature in two important ways. First, this paper details a cost-effective intervention that improves the physical fitness of a significant and growing portion of the community and suggests additional considerations for future ROI calculations. Second, this paper contributes methodologically by introducing the senior fitness test (a new criterion-referenced clinically relevant physical fitness standard specifically developed for seniors).

Financial bankruptcy is inevitable in the tourism and hospitality ecosystem. Despite the pertinence of tourism and hospitality businesses going into bankruptcy, limited studies have investigated the early warning signs and likelihood of a financial bankruptcy occurring in tourism and hospitality firms. This study examined the predictive value of financial ratios as potential indicators in predicting bankruptcy among tourism and hospitality firms.

Altman's z-score bankruptcy prediction model was applied through five key financial ratios to predict bankruptcy of the Thomas Cook Travel Group over a ten year period (2008–2018).

The key findings of this study strongly suggest that besides the size and location of the firm, financial ratios are reliable predictors and play a pivotal role in predicting the bankruptcy of a tourism and hospitality business.

The paper provides key stakeholders to adopt checks and balances to identify financial distressed tourism firms through financial ratios.

This is the first academic paper to inspect the financial history of Thomas Cook Travel Group in a financial ratio context, particularly following the bankruptcy of the firm in 2019.

Sane and civilised people, capable of thinking clearly, now recognise that if the peace of the world is to be secured, and that if another and even greater cataclysm is to be prevented, the Huns and their accomplices must be crushed, and crushed so completely that their recovery of the power to do evil shall be rendered utterly impossible. The persons who are “Pro‐German” for reasons at present best known to themselves, and the peace‐at‐any‐price cranks, may be left out of consideration except in so far as the advisability of placing the former under lock and key and the latter in lunatic asylums demands attention. A premature and inconclusive peace which would make it possible for our abominable enemies to rise again and threaten civilised mankind is unthinkable, and the Allied Powers must of necessity carry on the war until the Thugs of Europe have bitten the dust and have been compelled to sue for peace without terms or conditions. When the “Central Powers” have been forced to their knees, and the Allied armies of occupation have made them taste the bitterness and humiliation of invasion, the surviving criminals will be placed at the bar to receive the sentence of their judges, while the populations who have approved and applauded their hideous acts must also have adequate punishment meted out to them. What form is that punishment to take? The long and ghastly account has got to be read out and settled—so far as it can be settled in this world. What is to be the settlement?

Dealing with the subject of the artificial bleaching of flour, The Lancet observes that the public criterion of quality in respect of foods and beverages shows some interesting anomalies. Appreciation is often based, for example, on appearance, on how things look, and it is in this direction that conclusions often and obviously become illogical. In some instances the article demanded must be spotlessly white, while in others, if naturally white, it must be artificially coloured. The white loaf is a popular fancy, but white milk is suspected, and yet natural flour may be of a rich golden colour, while rich milk may have only a shade of brownish colour which is supposed to connote cream. The result is that in the one case flour is often deprived of its colour by a process of chemical bleaching, and that in the other an artificial colouring is added. Natural colour is objected to on the one hand, and on the other an artificial addition is demanded. It may be urged that both expedients are justifiable inasmuch as they meet a popular fancy, and that this counts in the enjoyment and even digestibility of the foods. If artificial means are employed to adjust the appearance of food to a popular standard, the proceeding can clearly only be allowed when it has been proved beyond all doubt that the products are not dietetically impaired or that they do not masquerade as something which they are not.

At a recent inquest upon the body of a woman who was alleged to have died as the result of taking certain drugs for an improper purpose, one of the witnesses described himself as “an analyst and manufacturing chemist,” but when asked by the coroner what qualifications he had, he replied : “I have no qualifications whatever. What I know I learned from my father, who was a well‐known ‘F.C.S.’” Comment on the “F.C.S.” is needless.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how well cooking shows promote safe food handling via TV and to suggest their use for providing good hygiene and good cooking practices examples for consumers.

Principal component analysis was applied for the multivariate statistical analysis of the cooking shows, the components being: personal hygiene, cross-contamination, cooking and storing practices and risk communication. Data were collected via a questionnaire special designed for the purpose of the study. The positive attributes were converted into numbers using a nine-point Likert scale. This conversion enabled ranking of the cooking shows as a function of the total results obtained and considering the best show as the one with the maximum score attained.

Evaluation of cooking practices by food safety professionals highlighted the most frequent safety errors and poor practices that are disseminated by the TV shows.

While the repetition of good food handling and cooking practices risks antagonizing viewers, an increase in occasional emphasis of good hygiene would be of benefit to domestic viewers and potentially improve food safety practices among the public.

This is the first study that gives an European perspective on presentation of safety practices during food handling and preparation in a range of TV cooking shows as it examines 19 such shows broadcasted in six European countries over three months. Adherence to food safety standards and introduction of a star rating system for safety practices in TV cooking shows is proposed.

To evaluate Thomas Cook’s financial condition, students deploy financial analysis techniques including comparative analysis. The role of financial reporting in impressions management is considered in two respects: firstly, the use of separately disclosed items by companies; and secondly, the treatment of goodwill on acquisition.

The case draws on a range of public data from Annual Reports and secondary sources including the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy investigation into the failure of Thomas Cook.

Thomas Cook Group plc’s (Thomas Cook) was one of the oldest travel firms, yet its apparently sudden failure on 23 September 2019 left 600,000 holidaymakers stranded and sparked the largest ever peacetime repatriation of British citizens at cost of £83m to the Department of Transport. Around 9,000 employees who had expected to be paid on 30 September were left unpaid.Could CEO Peter Frankhauser have addressed the challenges faced by Thomas Cook more effectively during his tenure or was the company locked into a flightpath to failure? The case highlights the importance of context when performing financial analysis and encourages students to evaluate the challenges posed by the current standards related to accounting for goodwill and corporate reporting of underlying performance.

This case can be used in undergraduate financial reporting and current issues in accounting courses/modules at the postgraduate level.

A Crown Court hearing of a charge of applying a false A description under S.2, Trade Descriptions Act, 1968, is given in some detail under Legal Proceedings in this issue of BFJ. It concerns using the word “ham”, ie., the natural leg of a single pig, to various pieces from several pigs, deboned, defatted, “tumbled, massaged and cooked” in a mould shaped to a leg of ham, from which the average purchaser would find it impossible to distinguish. As the defence rightly claimed, this process has been used for at least a couple of decades, and the product forms a sizeable section of the bacon trade. Evidence by prosecution witnesses, experienced shop managers, believed the product to be the genuine “ham”. There is nothing detrimental about the meat, save that it tends to contain an excess of added water, but this applies to many meat products today; or that the manufacturers are setting out to cheat the consumer. What offends is the description given to the product. Manufacture was described in detail—a county trading standards officer inspected the process at the defendant company's Wiltshire factory, witness to the extent of their co‐operation—and was questioned at great length by defending counsel. Specimens of the product were exhibited and the jury were treated to a tasting test—presumably designed to refute prosecution's claim that the meat was of “poor value”. The trial judge said the jury had no doubt been enlightened as to the methods of manufacturing ham. The marketing of the product was also a subject of examination.