Participation in OER Creation: A Trajectory of Values

This paper provides an analysis of interviews with seven faculty members who engaged in creating Open textbooks funded by government grants at a university in Canada in 2018. Using four values—access and equity, community and connection, agency and ownership, and risk and responsibility—identified by Sinkinson (2018), McAndrew (2018), and Keyek-Fransen (2018), we traced the ways in which university faculty members’ understanding of Open changed through the process of Open Educational Resource creation. As a teaching support-focused unit, we explore ways to provide our faculty and instructors with meaningful opportunities to develop their Open pedagogy. These findings reconceive the way that Open Educational Practice can be promoted at our University and others. Instead of focusing solely on OER creation, our faculty started engaging in thinking through the different conceptions of Open educational practice and identifying which concepts resonated with them. By reframing the ways in which faculty thought about Open Educational Practices, we have been better able to address the ways in which we support them.

Assessing the 2019 Redesign of Bulgarian Fiscal Equalization System

In many countries the narrowing of horizontal fiscal imbalance at local government level is an important issue of national fiscal policy. Large fiscal disparities at municipal level could lead either to lower service levels in fiscally poor regions or to higher tax rates for similar service levels in these regions. In turn, this could thwart efforts to reduce inequality in income distribution between individuals or could induce fiscally inefficient migration of business and individuals. Since the launch of fiscal decentralization reforms in Bulgaria in 2003 part of central government grants system for municipalities has been the equalization grant aimed at financing a minimum level of local services delivery. The equalization formula has undergone many changes during the years, and the last one was implemented in 2019. The main focus of the current study is to compare the equalizing effect of the equalization schemes applied in Bulgaria in 2018 and 2019. In order to test whether the 2018 and 2019 distribution formulas carry an equalizing effect with respect to municipal expenditure needs, per capita transfers received is regressed on three variables or indicators reflecting the differences in the municipal expenditure needs. Our results show that the new equalization mechanism as of 2019 is better designed to capture the differences in municipal expenditure needs and to alleviate fiscal disparities at local level when compared to the mechanism applied in 2018.

Telehealth for Medication for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment

Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (mOUD), a type of Medications for Addiction Treatment (MAT), has proven to be the most efficacious and cost-effective treatment for individuals suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD). Early initiation of mOUD has been shown to increase retention in addiction treatment. Models of care integrating telehealth with mOUD offer the potential to implement mOUD in point-of-care settings, achieving effective tertiary prevention. Integrating telehealth and mOUD also addresses barriers to addiction treatment continuity, like transportation concerns and stigma. Funding for use of telehealth for addiction treatment is achieved primarily through government grants and insurance reimbursements. There are many legal constructs regarding the dissemination of mOUD, and while not usually permitted, guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic have allowed for practitioners to be able to prescribe mOUD via telehealth without the requirement of an initial in-person examination.

The Difficulty of Easy Projects

We consider binary private contributions to public good projects that succeed when the number of contributors exceeds a threshold. We show that for standard distributions of contribution costs, valuable threshold public good projects are more likely to succeed when they require more contributors. Raising the success threshold reduces free-riding incentives, and this strategic effect dominates the direct effect. Common intuition that easier projects are more likely to succeed only holds for cost distributions with right tails fatter than Cauchy. Our results suggest government grants can reduce the likelihood that valuable threshold public good projects succeed. (JEL D71, H41, H81)

Investigating the technical efficiency of Japanese national universities following corporatization: a two-stage data envelopment analysis approach

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to measure the technical efficiency of Japanese national universities over the period 2010–2016. In addition, the authors also sought to identify the determinants of efficiency, especially those amenable to public policy intervention.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors ran a global intertemporal data envelopment analysis to understand the trends in efficiency for national universities over the relevant period. Following this, the authors conducted a second-stage regression using a double-bootstrapped truncated regression model to identify the possible determinants of efficiency.FindingsThe authors found no evidence to suggest that technical efficiency of national universities systematically decreased or increased in response to either structural reform or a reduction to government grants. Moreover, the share of government grants, the size of universities and disciplines of study offered by the universities were statistically significant determinants of efficiency.Practical implicationsThe study results suggest that efficacious public policy remedies might include inter alia measures to reduce the reliance on public funding, efforts to attract more foreign students, the execution of mergers among small universities and consolidation of inefficient departments.Originality/valueThis research fills an important gap in the scholarly literature with respect to Japanese national universities and identifies possible determinants to efficiency, which are amenable to remedial public policy interventions.

The Shadow Pandemic: Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on Zimbabwean Informal Sector in Chiredzi District

COVID-19 has disrupted the business sector globally, ushering developed and developing economies into an unprecedented recession beyond anything experienced in nearly a century. Governments across the globe have adopted a myriad of preventive measures. These remedial actions vary from one country to the other. Nonetheless, in Zimbabwe the government gave a blind eye on the informal sector as evidenced by the adopted preventive measures which neglected the plight of informal traders. To this end, this research interrogates the shadow pandemic in the Zimbabwean informal sector using Chiredzi District as an illustrative case study. Documentary review and key informed interviews were at the core of research methodology. The study found out that informal economy businesses are excluded from government grants, closure of businesses, failure to pay rentals, disruption of the supply chain, psychological impact and family dysfunctional are the quandaries causing a shadow pandemic. Inclusion of informal economy businesses in policies and government grants, government should negotiate with landlords, informal traders should be allowed to operate and inclusive social nets are the possible remedial actions that the government can adopted.