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Often overlooked in discussions related to how to ensure accessible and affordable high-quality early childhood education is the heavy burden that has been carried by the early childhood workforce; the data reveal a level of exploitation of this workforce that must be considered and addressed. This chapter will focus attention on the economic realities of the early childhood workforce as a key element to achieve equitable access to affordable high-quality early childhood services.

The United Kingdom (UK) Government is required to meet various renewable energy targets set by the European Union. The UK has had renewables support schemes for many years. It has become clear that the old schemes are insufficient to lead to enough new capacity to meet the target. The government has accordingly reformed the renewables obligation (RO). The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the reformed RO will meet the targets set for 2015 and 2020.

The paper undertakes a review of the modelling literature and performs a critical, deductive analysis of the RO to answer its research issue.

The paper finds that it is too late to make any difference to the 2010 target, but that the reforms might lead to the 2015 target being met, and finds that whilst it is clear that the reformed RO will lead to more capacity being built than otherwise would have been the case, it is difficult to establish that the 2020 target will be met.

This paper shows that there may be further reform of the already‐reformed RO, and that more time is needed to see the impacts of the recent regulatory responses to the external failures. This understanding will be useful in developing new policies to promote renewable energies in the UK.

Paul Davis has been appointed Sales Engineer with Alpha Metals, suppliers of solder products and related materials to the electronics industry. Born and bred in Stockton, he graduated in electrical and electronic engineering at Brunei University, and then worked in development and assembly, where he gained experience in the flow solder process, just‐in‐time manufacturing and statistical process control.

This conference, in the series being run by the National Physical Laboratory to help the electronics assembly industry consider the problems of CFC phase‐out, was essentially an updated repeat of the event held on 30 April, which had been a complete, standing‐room‐only sell‐out. Surprisingly, this repeat performance also attracted a full house and the format used has proved to be the most popular of all the NPL non‐CFC options conferences.

This conference was the second in the National Physical Laboratory series focusing in turn on each of the non‐CFC options for de‐fluxing soldered electronics assemblies. The first conference was on Controlled Atmosphere Soldering and the third will be on New Solvents.

In a village of Eastern Yucatan, Mexico, cargo or kuuch sponsors compare their ritual tasks to “buying life” from crosses, Catholic saints, and Mayan deities or “owners.” The local notion of compromiso, engagement, or commitment, helps these festival participants express the condition of possibility to successfully perform such exchanges. Decisive for these life renewals, promises, and compromisos depend upon empathy to authorize ritualists and subsume social and natural phenomena under exchange paradigms. By defining, critiquing and using the concept of “disposition” as an inherently self-other stance through which economy transforms into religiosity and vice versa, this chapter analyzes this particular regime of engagement and the temporalities it implies. Through a commitment to the past and the practice of promissory exchange, sponsors develop a new perceptual scheme in which the ritual cultivation of discipline, awareness, expectation, and responsibility are expressed.

This study empirically examines calendar anomalies, with a specific focus on the day-of-the-week (DOW) effect within the context of socially responsible investing (SRI).

This study analyzes daily returns from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) Asia Pacific for the past five years (2019–2024). The DJSI is widely regarded as a leading benchmark for corporate sustainability and aligns closely with SRI principles. To explore the DOW effect, the study employs various types of regression analysis to identify patterns of significantly abnormal returns on specific trading days of the week.

Through various estimation methods, there is robust evidence of the DOW effect within the DJSI Asia Pacific. Specifically, Tuesday returns are consistently positive and significantly higher than returns on other trading days of the week.

The findings carry managerial implications for SRI-oriented investors aiming to formulate trading strategies that enhance the likelihood of achieving investment goals within the DJSI Asia Pacific. Furthermore, the findings reveal potential market inefficiencies associated with sustainable investment, which warrant further policy consideration.

This is the first study to examine the presence of the DOW effect in stock returns specifically within the SRI context. Furthermore, by analyzing data from the recent five years (2019–2024), this study offers contemporary insights into the patterns of daily returns within the DJSI Asia Pacific.

Recent research has focused on the influence of the political party of the US President on stock indices. This current paper extends this area of research by including the influence of the political party that holds the majority in Congress into the research design. The results do not support the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant relationship between the political party of the president and the return on the stock index. However, the political party with the majority in Congress is significantly related to the return on the index. The returns during Republican controlled Congresses are higher than returns during Democrat controlled Congresses.