6 pp. / The Arizona Nutrition Network (AzNN) is a public/private partnership engaged in a statewide effort to encourage healthy eating, increase physical activity, and achieve appropriate caloric balance for healthy body weights. The AzNN programmatic activities target people in low-income households that receive or are eligible to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. An integral partner in this statewide effort is the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Nutrition Network (UANN), one of several local implementing agencies (LIAs) that conduct Supplemental Nutrition Assistance – Education (SNAP-Ed) programming throughout the state. The UANN receives funding from the AzNN to deliver nutrition and physical activity education programs to Arizona communities and implement policy, systems, and environmental approaches for obesity prevention.

No description available.

This review will focus on Parts I and III. It summarizes the historical context faced by the Peruvian economy since 1980 and briefly describes the main challenges it will confront in the near future to maintain its relevant position within the global economy.

Includes bibliographical references. / This paper builds on a growing literature on trade-related international technology diffusion. It examines whether South Africa can enhance its productivity by importing machinery and equipment that embodies foreign knowledge from trading partners that do significant amounts of research and development. The focus is on South Africa's manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the paper also examines the role of human capital in the facilitation of the effective adoption of foreign technology. Using trade data from 1976 to 2001 - imports from the European Union, industrialized countries and 'advanced' developing countries - the relationship between capital imports and total factor productivity growth and human capital is analysed using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration. The results show that there is evidence of an equilibrium relationship between the variables; that foreign technology spillovers have taken place in the manufacturing sector, and that the effect on productivity is enhanced by the presence of quality human capital.

Includes bibliographical references / Small scale business owners living and operating businesses in flood prone informal settlement areas are amongst the most vulnerable groups of society to climate change and associated risks. The state is unable to provide key goods and services in many of these areas of limited statehood. How these business owners respond to flood hazard in areas of limited statehood is of interest to this research. This research explores the governance processes in informal settlement areas in Cape Town, South Africa. A key concern in this study is what widespread informality means for the lived realities of the poor in environmentally vulnerable communities, particularly informal settlement areas. I explore the flood management strategies available in both the formal and informal sectors and how they are used by the small-scale business. Using a mixed method approach, in two informal settlement areas in Cape Town, I draw out and test factors for comparison with a focus on understanding the determinants of small business owners' choice and use of flood management strategy. The main literary contribution that this study makes is to demonstrate the ways in which civil associations in the informal sector built social capital that is then called upon at times of hazard. These civil associations help the business owners monetarily, but they also have inbuilt social capital which members exploit to respond to hazards other than the ones that the associations were created for. This way, small business owners can count on fellow community members in the face of adversity. I explore the ways that social capital is built in these associations, and how members are encouraged to contribute towards it and help others in times of need. This research helps our understanding of regulations outside of the state, and the governance role of non-state actors to respond to multiple hazards. By interrogating this governance issue in informal settlement areas and amongst low-income owners, I contribute to the growing literature on informality in African cities. The research makes an important contribution to research study whose framing of the state is empirically based, and therefore reflects the reality on the ground in many African cities. Much of the literature on governance in African studies had assumed the idea of a Westphalian state and interrogated the state, its functions and interaction the populace under this framing. Consequently, such research is unable to capture the real nature and governance capabilities of the state and raised more questions that it has been able to answer. Further, this framing of the governance role of the state in African cities obscures the role of non-state governance actors in both the formal and informal sectors. To this end, I conducted interviews with a total of 154 small business owners in Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa township and Victoria Mxenge informal settlement in Philippi township. The interviews elicited information on business owners' exposure to flooding, their response and the factors that influenced their choice to response mechanism. A survey was also conducted to get demographic data of the business owners in the research sites, other key government officials, academic researchers, and representatives of insurance companies in the formal market. Based on this survey data further variables that could influence the choice of flood management strategy were drawn and tested in further interviews. The findings of the research point to the usefulness of nonstate institutions in the response to flooding in poor communities. The social capital built in to civil associations and its availability to fellow members at times of adversity makes them an adaptive vehicle to respond to numerous other hazards other than the ones that they are intended for.

In this dissertation, the effectiveness of three Polish return migration programs will be analysed against a combination of return migration theories and economic channels. It will examine the motivations behind their conception, and the services, grants or initiatives implemented with the aim of addressing the needs of new and existing migrants, improving communication channels, and most importantly, developing the environment, means and incentives that will attract migrants to return to their homeland. Any failures to properly identify and address the needs, desires and aspirations of migrants with the structure of the return migration programs greatly delimit the success of the respective program through lesser participation and diminished societal impact.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-103). / This dissertation asks the research question: "How does the Johannesburg Human Development Strategy conceptualise the constraints that exist to escaping poverty?" It answers the question by adopting a critical approach to the Johannesburg Human Development Strategy (JHDS). Using an argument analysis methodology, the dissertation ascertains what assumptions about constraints to poverty reduction are implicit within the strategy. The dissertation shows the JHDS to emphasise livelihood asset deficiencies as the most significant constraint to poverty reduction.

No description available.

Abstract Not Provided. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis advisor: Candace Jones / Thesis advisor: Richard P. Nielsen / The sharing economy has played an important role in transforming today's business landscape. The dissertation consists of two essays that examine different aspects of meanings illuminated by the sharing economy. In each essay, I draw on several theoretical lenses, including institutional logics, legitimacy, and categories, to build theories of how entrepreneurial firms strategically appropriate meanings as resources to shape the attention and the interpretation of their activities and how such cultural meanings emerge and transform. The first essay illustrates the case of Airbnb to examine how an entrepreneurial firm uses institutional logics for legitimacy in navigating multiple audiences with potentially contradictory criteria for legitimacy at different stages of development. The second essay looks at the sharing economy as a category to examine what is used as the central examples of a category by the category promoters (i.e., movement) versus the press, the differences in how the central examples are understood that lead to changes and differences in the category’s meanings, and ultimately affect the survival or decline of a category. I conclude with implications for theories around changes in meanings, the strategic uses of meanings, and their political and moral nature. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.