Illegal drug use among older adults.

Illegal drug use IS a much discussed, publicised and researched area of criminology. However, there has been little interest in its mature users. It is this subsection of illegal drug users that is investigated in this research. As the first generation of widespread and popular drug users is reaching late-middle age, this is becoming a fast growing and fascinating area of study. As the size of this drug using subsection is set to grow in coming years, the lack of existing research in this area is becoming more and more apparent. Existing research related to the area of drug use among older adults tends to be out-of date, predominantly American based, and looks largely at alcohol use, prescription misuse, and over-the-counter abuse. Equally, there is a lack of community based research in this area, which relies heavily on samples taken from the criminal justice system and treatment centres. This research aims to address these deficiencies. To create therefore as complete a picture of this little investigated social phenomenon as possible both quantitative and qualitative research techniques are incorporated into the research. Quantitatively, secondary data analysis is used to explore the British Crime Survey. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate techniques are used to analyse the data set, including hypothesis testing and logistics regression. For the qualitative component, the research uses snowball sampling to conduct face to-face in-depth interviews with adults over the age of 40 involved in recent illegal drug use living in the community. Overall, this research shows that older recent illegal drug users exists, it produces a profile of older recent drug users, including demographic and criminological characteristics, and illustrates the drug using careers of older drug users, showing how they incorporate drug use into their lives. Ultimately, it provides evidence that contradicts the notion that illegal drug use is an activity reserved exclusively for the young and shows that drug use does not exclude having a long, happy and productive life

Local Government Efficiency: Evidence from the Czech Municipalities

We measure cost efficiency of 202 Czech municipalities of extended scope in period 2003-2008. The study is the first application of overall efficiency measurement of the local governments in the new EU member states, and the second in post-communist countries. We measure government efficiency through established quantitative and qualitative indicators of the provision of education, cultural facilities, infrastructure and other local services. First, we employ non-parametric approach of the data envelopment analysis and adjust the efficiency scores by bootstrapping. Second, we employ the stochastic frontier analysis and control for effects of various demographic, economic, and political variables. We compare scores under our preferred specification, i.e. pseudo-translog time-variant stochastic-frontier analysis with determinants, with alternative scores. The determinants that robustly increase inefficiency are population size, distance to the regional center, share of university-educated citizens, capital expenditures, subsidies per capita, and the share of self-generated revenues. Concerning political variables, increase in party concentration and the voters' involvement increases efficiency, and local council with a lower share of left-wing representatives also tend to be more efficient. We interpret determinants both as indicators of slack, non-discretionary inputs, and unobservable outputs. The analysis is conducted also for the period 1994-1996, where political variables appear to influence inefficiency in a structurally different way. From comparison of the two periods, we obtain that small municipalities improve efficiency significantly more that large municipalities

Measuring Efficiency in Local Government: An Analysis of New South Wales Domestic Waste Management Function

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales’ local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors which may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely-populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria is made. The results suggests that, on average, waste management inputs could be reduced to just over 65 percent of the current level based upon observable best-practice whilst productivity losses due to scale effects account for slightly over 15 percent of total inputs. The results also indicate that inefficiency in urban developed councils is largely the result of congestion and other collection difficulties encountered in densely-populated areas, whilst inefficiency in regional and rural councils stems from an inability to attain an optimal scale of operations

Free disposal hull and measurement of efficiency : theory, applications and software

Doctorat - UC

Fine structure of the spermatophore and intradermic penetration of sperm cells in Myzostoma cirriferum (Annelida, Myzostomida)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Distinguishing technical and scale efficiency on non-convex and convex technologies: theoretical analysis and empirical illustrations

This paper defines a decomposition of technical efficiency for a series of nonparametric deterministic reference technologies related to the Free Disposal Hull. More specifically, introducing several returns to scale assumptions into this non-convex production model allows one to distinguish between technical and scale inefficiencies. These technologies and the resulting efficiency decomposition are illustrated with several data sets and contrasted with results based on the traditional, convex Data Envelopment Analysis models. In particular, data on UK rates departments are extensively analysed. Furthermore, samples of French urban transit companies and of Belgian municipalities serve to verify certain empirical regularities

MUSEUM ASSESSMENT AND FDH TECHNOLOGY: A GLOBAL APPROACH

This paper presents a global approach for museum assessment. We define a museum as an entity which needs to be evaluated according to three well defined tasks: preservation, research and communication, and outcomes. We propose a methodology based on the determination of efficiency frontiers. This method assumes a deterministic non parametric and non convex technology (Free Disposal Hull). We analyse technical efficiency, but also scale efficiency with a new restrictive scale approach. We present an ordering of museums into classes representing a level of performance with respect to the three required tasks. We illustrate our analysis using a three year database of museums from the French speaking region of Belgium