Welfare-based Approach Research Articles

Safeguarding the welfare of children: 1

Department of Health policy requires all health professionals to contribute to the child protection process. Midwives are anticipated to recognise predictors of risk, by identifying adult behaviours or attitudes that might indicate possible future difficulties in parenting. This paper, presented in two parts, examines the contradictions arising from the social constructs of motherhood, childhood and abuse and describes how these intrinsic tensions, coupled with the lack of any objective tools to predict possible abuse, gives rise to conflict in the midwife-mother relationship. It summarises the sociopolitical culture that sustained this social control approach to addressing parenting difficulties. Discussion explores how the governmental Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health, 2000) could be adapted for utilisation by midwives, to assist them in making objective social assessments and identifying the needs of individual women and their families, supporting a welfare-based approach to the provision of care and services.

Competitive devaluations: toward a welfare-based approach

This paper revisits the international transmission of exchange rate shocks in a multicountry economy, providing a choice-theoretic framework for the policy analysis of competitive devaluations. As opposed to the traditional view, a devaluation by one country does not necessarily have an adverse beggar-thy-neighbor effect on its trading partners, because they can benefit from an improvement in their terms of trade. Furthermore, a retaliatory devaluation need not be the optimal strategy for the neighbor countries, as the induced terms of trade deterioration can be large enough to offset the gains from defending their export market share. The concern over competitive devaluations reflected in the Fund's charter, and the system-wide implications of changes in exchange rates, still motivate Fund policy recommendations. A major Fund concern in the Asian crisis has been the fear that Asian currencies would become so undervalued and current account surpluses so large as to damage the economies of other countries, developing countries included. This is one reason the Fund has stressed the need first to stabilize and then to strengthen exchange rates in the Asian countries now in crisis — and for this purpose, not to cut interest rates until the currency stabilizes and begins to appreciate.

The Changing Management of Social Housing: The Impact of Externalisation and Managerialisation

The paper examines how the New Public Management (NPM) project has reshaped housing management in England and Wales. Historical tensions concerning the nature and scope of housing management, and its recent establishment as a public sector profession, have been exacerbated by NPM. In particular, the two central NPM processes of externalisation and managerialisation have led to the provision of new social housing by housing associations and the development of rationalistic management. By exploring the changing nature of housing management in externalised housing associations, the paper illustrates the complex ways in which property and welfare-based approaches to housing management are being played out. It is argued that managerialism has worked to define core business and a property-based approach at the expense of aspects of personal and welfare-based services. This process is being intensified by new technologies as seen through the development of call centres. Housing associations and the regulator have sought to recapture some aspects of the welfare approach to housing management to provide services to increasingly welfare-dependent tenants. However, the paper concludes that the tensions between the property and welfare approaches are likely to lead to the domination of a property-based approach because of the ongoing managerial and external pressures on housing associations.

Competitive Devaluations: A Welfare-Based Approach

This paper studies the mechanism of international transmission of exchange rate shocks within a three-country Center-Periphery model, providing a choice-theoretic framework for the policy analysis and empirical assessment of competitive devaluations. If relative prices and terms of trade exhibit some flexibility conforming to the law of one price, a devaluation by one country is beggar-thy-neighbor relative to another country through its effects on cost-competitiveness in a third market. Yet, due to direct bilateral trade among the two countries, there is a large range of parameter values for which a country is better off by maintaining a peg in response to its partner's devaluation. If instead deviations from the law of one price are to be considered the dominant empirical paradigm, then the beggar-thy-neighbor effect based on competition in a third market may disappear. However, a country's devaluation has a negative welfare impact on the economies of its trading partners based on the deterioration of their export revenues and profits and the increase in disutility from higher labor effort for any level of consumption.

Measuring the Existence Value of Wildlife: What Do CVM Estimates Really Show?

Two research programs are brought together to contribute to the growing body of work on alternatives to standard welfare-based approaches to environmental valuation and policy. The first is the theoretical literature undermining the new welfare ...