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Historically, Panama has always been “a place of transit.” While technically the isthmus formed part of Colombia in the nineteenth century, it was linked geopolitically to the United States soon after the California gold rush, beginning in the late 1840s. The first attempt at building a canal ended in failure in 1893 when disease and poor management forced Ferdinand de Lesseps to abandon the project. The U.S. undertaking to build the canal could only begin after Panama declared itself free and broke away from Colombia in 1903, with the support of the United States.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to previous research on customer relationships by quantitatively examining differences in the monetary benefits obtained by consumers using social and commercial relationships to make purchases from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Customer transaction and relationship data from an SME in the USA is used to quantitatively assess the value of different marketplace relationships in an entrepreneurial context. Tobit regression is used to empirically model and test the impact of specific relationship characteristics on customer discounts.

Customers using social connections to make purchases obtain significantly larger discounts than customers using commercial connections; customers using direct connections attain significantly larger discounts than consumers using indirect connections (referrals). Interestingly, when examined by connection type, direct and indirect connections do not produce significant differences for social connections, yet they yield notable differences for commercial connections. The findings provide valuable insights to entrepreneurs for understanding and managing customer relationships.

This study empirically demonstrates that social relationships can be both prevalent and influential in the marketplace. The methodology used to quantitatively assess the monetary value associated with different methods of engaging with SMEs allows objective comparisons among different types of customer relationships. Quantification also allows important relationship characteristics to be empirically examined, including how the relationships compare to one another and to nonpersonal marketing activities. Ultimately, these novel contributions generate important insights to help marketers and entrepreneurs better understand customer relationships.

The purpose of this research is to explore the economic and social arguments used in support of government assistance for cultural well‐being, and the accounting measures used to capture cultural well‐being at a regional level in New Zealand.

Accounting information reported in city council annual reports is used to examine expenditure on cultural well‐being. The research investigates possible relationships between regional economic growth and regional expenditure on arts, culture and heritage. It also investigates justifications for expenditure on activities classified under the category of arts, culture and heritage in the annual reports produced by New Zealand city councils.

In most regions, funding for cultural activities has increased over the past ten years. The findings of this research indicate there is no significant relationship between funding on cultural activities and regional economic growth. Instead, the research highlights the emphasis placed on social benefit arising from funding cultural activities.

The research is limited by access to comparable data. Accordingly, not all New Zealand regions are included in the analysis, resulting in a small number of observations. Moreover, robust city‐based measures of economic growth are unavailable, resulting in the use of labour force participation as a proxy for economic growth, together with the elimination of some regions in part of the analysis.

Extant literature indicates that government expenditure on artistic and cultural activities is undertaken for reasons that include: possible economic benefit or generation of externalities, mitigation of market failure, educational purposes or improved national identity. In New Zealand, the “merit good” argument prevails with the objective of spending on artistic and cultural activity by local government expected to generate social rather than economic benefit.

There is a notable dearth of interventions that have been specifically designed for Asian English Language Learner (ELL) students, and the existing research on ELL students often lacks population validity and sample diversity. In response to this need, this paper aims to review current research on literacy interventions for East/Southeast Asian ELLs and provide practical recommendations for educators teaching literacy skills to this population.

To identify studies for inclusion in this review, a systematic literature search was conducted of peer-reviewed studies and dissertations were published between 2001 and 2016. Articles were included in the authors’ review, if those described a literacy intervention where the sample was entirely East and/or Southeast Asian ELLs, or, if the sample included other groups, the study provided an analysis of the intervention’s effectiveness specifically for the East or Southeast Asian ELLs in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were included.

The authors’ search yielded seven studies. The authors found three main contributors to effective literacy instruction for this population: culturally relevant instruction, family involvement and encouraging first language (L1) development to facilitate language and literacy in English. Results indicated that interventions that consider a student’s cultural style (i.e. preference toward a teacher-centered classroom) or included cultural familiar themes/texts were found to be more effective. In addition, strategies that encouraged the development of L1, such as the use of dual-language books, explicitly teaching contrastive analysis and providing the same book to be read at home and a school were all correlated with greater literacy gains. Finally, facilitating home-school communication seemed to contribute to the efficacy of several of the interventions.

This paper reveals the need to expand the current knowledge base on effective literacy instruction and intervention for East/Southeast Asian ELL students, especially research on population validity, given the specific needs of this growing population. This review is limited by the small number of relevant studies and the fact that not all East/Southeast Asian languages or ethnic groups were represented. There is still a great need for future research to determine what methods or combination of factors are effective with East/Southeast Asian ELLs of various ages and needs.

The findings from this paper have generated practical recommendations for educators teaching literacy skills to East/Southeast Asian ELL students, such as: tailor literacy instruction to be culturally relevant, design interventions around student’s preferred learning style, encourage parent/family involvement, provide bilingual instruction and bilingual reading materials and provide parents with books and information about the literacy curriculum.

This paper also reveals the need to expand the current knowledge base on effective literacy instruction and intervention for East/Southeast Asian ELL students, especially research on population validity, given the specific needs of this growing population.

Based on an extensive literature search, this is the first paper to review and summarize the research on literacy interventions for East/Southeast Asian ELLs over the past 15 years. This paper provides valuable recommendations to educators and calls for more research on English literacy acquisition specific to this population.