Measuring allocative efficiency in Cultural Economics: the case of “Fundación Princesa de Asturias” (The Princess of Asturias Foundation)

The literature on Cultural Economics provides us with some examples for the measurement of technical efficiency. However, there are few case studies dedicated to the analysis of allocative efficiency. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by incorporating a methodology that analyses both technical and allocative efficiency. We use the Shephard’s distance function, particularly suitable when affronted with non-profit-making firms or institutions that are not interested in cost minimization. As an empirical application, we analyse the efficiency of Fundación Princesa de Asturias (PAF), a Spanish non-governmental organization devoted to promoting the cultural, scientific and humanistic values of universal heritage, the period of study being 1988–2012. Our findings suggest that PAF could have used 7% less inputs to achieve the same level of output. On the other hand, we have found allocative inefficiency. Concretely, the input for other expenditures appears to have been over-utilized in relation to both the inputs for labour and current assets, with labour in turn being over-utilized in relation to current assets. Moreover, our results indicate that both technical and allocative efficiency have clearly improved during the period analysed. In summary, our empirical application shows how distance function methodology can be successfully implemented to measure allocative efficiency in cultural firms and institutions.     

Toward an Expanded Understanding of Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Education: Constructing Identity through a Critical,Additive Bilingual/Bicultural Pedagogy

This literature review will take a focused look at the three currently accepted theoretical foundations upon which two-way bilingual immersion programs are based. Through an examination of research on identity construction in childhood and adolescence, particularly as seen through a critical pedagogical lens, it proposes that there exists a fourth and relatively unexamined component: identity construction. Further, it postulates that identity construction is of particular relevance to linguistic minority students.     

Multiculturalism: An "as if" phenomenon

Multiculturalism has come to have multiple meanings depending on the context and voice it is given. In higher education it has become a symbol for particular notions about minority and majority groups, and their places in the institution. While multicultural affairs and concerns at academic institutions appear to be genuinely supported and give the impression of commitment, they are, on closer inspection, a superficial and reactionary response to environmental pressures. Multicultural initiatives are not integrated into the very heart of the institution, but, rather, relegated to a cursory importance that, while genuinely intended, maintains the status quo. This paper attempts to closely examine the process of multiculturalism in small liberal arts colleges from the perspective of a minority faculty and administrator. That is, from a simultaneous position of subject and object.     

Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: A study with children

This paper investigates the relationship between ability to detect changes in prosody and reading performance in Spanish. Participants were children aged 7–8 years. Their tasks consisted of reading words, reading non‐words, stressing non‐words and reproducing sequences of two, three or four non‐words by pressing the corresponding keys on the computer keyboard. Non‐word sequences were constructed with minimal non‐word pairs differing in a single phoneme (/kúpi/ ‐ /kúti/) or in the stress pattern (/mípa/ ‐ /mipá/). Results showed that performance on phoneme contrast sequences (e.g. /kúpi/ ‐ /kúti/) predicted word reading. In contrast, performance on stress contrast sequences (e.g. /mípa/ ‐ /mipá/) predicted non‐word reading, but only when two‐non‐word sequences were analysed. This suggests that stress sensitivity may be one of the factors related to reading fluency as most errors at reading non‐words consisted of false starts and pauses between syllables. Results also showed that stress sensitivity (scored in two non‐word sequences) predicted stress assignment, and that knowledge of stress rules predicted both word and non‐word reading. This suggests that stress sensitivity may help in learning stress rules, and that knowledge of stress rules is relevant for reading.     

Gender Verifications in Sport: From an East/West Antagonism to a North/South Antagonism

This paper aims to analyze gender verifications in sport from a socio-historical approach. These medical controls intended to keep men from competing in women's international competitions. Some female athletes are put through a masculinization trial, because of morphologies and performances judged as too masculine. Facing these athletes who disrupt the representation of a binary construction between the male sex and the female sex, sports institutions attempt to maintain a sexual bi-categorization. More precisely, this paper will present the ‘symbolic’ suppression of tests since 2000. Thereafter, authorities only rely on an aesthetic and visual assessment of female bodies and no longer use tests in a systematic and obligatory fashion. This reveals the moving boundary subjectively plotted between the masculine and the feminine, which become all the more blurred when the ‘race and class markers’ interfere with the ‘sex markers’.