685 ACI Structural Journal, V. 105, No. 6, November-December 2008. MS No. S-2006-350.R2 received August 24, 2007, and reviewed under Institute publication policies. Copyright © 2008, American Concrete Institute. All rights reserved, including the making of copies unless permission is obtained from the copyright proprietors. Pertinent discussion including author’s closure, if any, will be publis...

Due to the global competitive environment in the mobile app market, traditional problem-solving methods in examining the problem of accepting stores offering these digital products have ignored the important role of human factors and therefore this weakness necessitates research on relevant policies by governing bodies from another perspective based on a soft systems thinking approach. This pro...

Two research questions structure this article: 1) what climate change policies have been formulated by Danish municipalities? and 2) why is there such a huge variation in the scope and ambition of these policies? In answering the first question it is demonstrated that climate change action plans have been developed and integrated into many Danish local governments' plans as a result of climate ...

One of the most vital areas of public policy is education. In today’s societies quality and equality in education are among the basic human rights and its provision within the basic responsibilities of modern governments. Setting educational policies is the framework within which governments try to fulfill this duty. The success of such policies is a function of basic administrative arrangement...

The present study was aimed to investigate the effects of oil price shocks on discretionary fiscal policies in selected OPEC countries during 1980-2015. In this regard, the heterogeneous dynamic reaction to structural shock was examined using Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (PSVAR) technique. Based on the findings, the effect of oil price shocks on discretionary fiscal policy was positiv...

The health effects of economic resources (eg, education, employment, and living place) and psychological assets (eg, self-efficacy, perceived control over life, anger control, and emotions) are well-known. This article summarizes the results of a growing body of evidence documenting Blacks' diminished return, defined as a systematically smaller health gain from economic resources and psychologi...

We propose to declaratively specify policies for the enforcement of taxonomic integrity constraints directly in the structural conceptual schema. These policies depend on the kind of constraint to be enforced (disjointness, covering or specialization) and on the particular event that may cause its violation. We provide a formal definition of these policies and of the repair actions that must be...

We propose a tractable and coherent framework that captures both conventional and unconventional monetary policies with the shadow fed funds rate. Empirically, we document the shadow rate’s resemblance to an overall financial conditions index, various private interest rates, the Fed’s balance sheet, and the Taylor rule. Theoretically, we demonstrate the impact of unconventional policies, such a...

This paper discusses Kenya’s macroeconomic policies during the 1980s. It specifically analyzes issues of food security as it relates to market performance and policies. This is followed by projections of the effects of various policy changes and market conditions on grain production, consumption, and imports over a five year period. It appears that structural adjustment policies have consequenc...