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Widespread Criticism (widespread + criticism)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting50%
Humanities and Social Sciences33%

Selected Abstracts

Distributional effects of WTO agricultural reforms in rich and poor countries

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 50 2007
Thomas W. Hertel
SUMMARY WTO agricultural reforms Rich countries' agricultural trade policies are the battleground on which the future of the WTO's troubled Doha Round will be determined. Subject to widespread criticism, they nonetheless appear to be almost immune to serious reform, and one of their most common defences is that they protect poor farmers. Our findings reject this claim. The analysis conducted here uses detailed data on farm incomes to show that major commodity programmes are highly regressive in the US, and that the only serious losses under trade reform are among large, wealthy farmers in a few heavily protected sub-sectors. In contrast, analysis using household data from 15 developing countries indicates that reforming rich countries' agricultural trade policies would lift large numbers of developing country farm households out of poverty. In the majority of cases these gains are not outweighed by the poverty-increasing effects of higher food prices among other households. Agricultural reforms that appear feasible, even under an ambitious Doha Round, achieve only a fraction of the benefits for developing countries that full liberalization promises, but protect the wealthiest US farms from most of the rigors of adjustment. Finally, the analysis conducted here indicates that maximal trade-led poverty reductions occur when developing countries participate more fully in agricultural trade liberalization. , Thomas W. Hertel, Roman Keeney, Maros Ivanic and L. Alan Winters [source]

Environmental liability and accident prevention: preliminary experiences in Germany,

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 6 2001
Reimund Schwarze
Strict environmental liability, in conjunction with improved environmental liability insurance, proves to be an effective instrument to tackle environmental risks of industrial installations. This paper examines the experience with the Environmental Liability Act and Environmental Liability Insurance in Germany. It rebuts the widespread criticism of the preventive effect of the Act and considers the actual changes in the number of environmental accidents in Germany. The picture that emerges from this study is that the Act seems to have a measurable preventive effect from 1993 onwards, the year in which the new environmental liability policy was introduced. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

,Flames and fear on the farms': controlling foot and mouth disease in Britain, 1892,2001*

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 198 2004
Abigail Woods
For over a century, the British government has pursued a policy of national freedom from foot and mouth disease (F.M.D.), a highly contagious disease of cloven-footed animals. One of the cornerstones of this policy was the slaughter of infected animals. However, on several occasions , most notably in 2001 , slaughter struggled to contain F.M.D., and provoked widespread criticism and calls for policy change. Drawing upon a range of previously unexamined sources, this article examines the history of F.M.D. in Britain, in an attempt to explain the twenty-first-century persistence of a Victorian disease control policy. [source]

Managing organisational culture: insights from the hospitality industry

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002
Emmanuel Ogbonna
Despite the widespread criticism of the culture management approach by respected academics, recent surveys indicate that managers are continuing to engage in planned cultural interventions. Indeed, reports demonstrate that managing organisational culture is one of the most popular forms of managerial intervention, with one survey concluding that over 90 per cent of organisations engage in planned cultural change. This study describes and analyses organisational culture interventions in four companies within a single industry. It argues that the conceptualisation of organisational culture and culture change should be differentiated in ways that recognise the significance of contextual factors. It presents an analysis of interventions in the hospitality industry and delineates four insights from this sector that are pertinent to the theory and practice of managing cultural change. [source]

Kuwait's oil production plans in confusion

OIL AND ENERGY TRENDS, Issue 7 2006
Article first published online: 18 JUL 200
Kuwait is debating ambitious plans to increase its oil production by over 60% between now and 2020, to 3.7 mn bpd. The fate of the proposals, however, is far from clear. There has been widespread criticism of various aspects of the whole scheme, including what, if any, role should be played by foreign oil companies, and even whether Kuwait possesses the reserves to enable it to reach its ambitious target. Many of the criticisms were aired in the emirate's elections in June and the arguments look set to continue, delaying plans which are already, in some cases, several years old. [source]

Comparisons and connections between mean field dynamo theory and accretion disc theory

ASTRONOMISCHE NACHRICHTEN, Issue 1 2010
E.G. Blackman
Abstract The origin of large scale magnetic fields in astrophysical rotators, and the conversion of gravitational energy into radiation near stars and compact objects via accretion have been subjects of active research for a half century. Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence makes both problems highly nonlinear, so both subjects have benefitted from numerical simulations.However, understanding the key principles and practical modeling of observations warrants testable semi-analytic mean field theories that distill the essential physics. Mean field dynamo (MFD) theory and alpha-viscosity accretion disc theory exemplify this pursuit. That the latter is a mean field theory is not always made explicit but the combination of turbulence and global symmetry imply such. The more commonly explicit presentation of assumptions in 20th century textbook MFDT has exposed it to arguably more widespread criticism than incurred by 20th century alpha-accretion theory despite complementary weaknesses. In the 21st century however, MFDT has experienced a breakthrough with a dynamical saturation theory that consistently agrees with simulations. Such has not yet occurred in accretion disc theory, though progress is emerging. Ironically however, for accretion engines, MFDT and accretion theory are presently two artificially uncoupled pieces of what should be a single coupled theory. Large scale fields and accretion flows are dynamically intertwined because large scale fields likely play a key role in angular momentum transport. I discuss and synthesize aspects of recent progress in MFDT and accretion disc theory to suggest why the two likely conspire in a unified theory (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source]