Purpose: The goal of this 3-year pilot project was to increase accessibility to genetics educational and clinical services in Maine. Methods: Southern Maine Genetics Services, Foundation for Blood Research in collaboration with Maine Telemedicine Services established telemedicine capacity to link with rural health care centers located in Northern, Central, and Southern Maine and public health nursing statewide for the provision of genetics clinical and educational services. Core partners included a rural family practice residency program, a rural pediatric practice in northern Maine, and public health nurses statewide. The telegenetics model created was based on development and implementation of a preventive and medical management technology solution, conducting a pilot study to collect data, and approaching insurance companies for reimbursement. Evaluation included surveys on the quality, acceptability, and usefulness of genetics services delivered via telemedicine, telephone interviews, and decision-making confidence evaluations. Results: During the project period, 24 rural clinical sites participated. In total, 93 presentations were given, and 125 patients were evaluated. Sixty-four percent of patients evaluated were pediatric. Despite site coordinator efforts to complete satisfaction surveys, the provider and patient response level was low (18% and 25%, respectively). Of those evaluations received, provider and patient response to telegenetics was positive. Decision-making confidence for genetics and neurology consultants was high. Our experience contributes to the development of telegenetics models that can be used in other rural states. Genet Med 2005: 7(1):21-27.

Purpose The banking sector stability depends in large part on the size of non-performing loans (NPLs). Hence, the factors which explain the problem loans are very useful information for banks. Notably, studies in this regard with respect to the small developing countries’ banking sector have received less attention. Therefore, this study aims to examine the determinants of NPLs with a case of Fiji’s banking sector, over the period 2000-2013. Design/methodology/approach The balanced sample consists of the entire banking sector (five commercial banks and two non-bank financial institutions). First, the authors estimate a base model which comprise bank-specific indicators that are related to bank management and then they extend the estimations to include macroeconomic/structural factors such as economic growth, inflation, changes of the real effective exchange rate, unemployment, remittances, political instability and external events like the global financial crisis. The estimations are done using pooled OLS, the random effects and the fixed effects regression methods. Findings The results show that the following indicators have negative association with NPL and are statistically significant with the conventional levels: return on equity, capital adequacy requirement, market share based on assets, unemployment and time. On the other hand, the net interest margin has a positive and statistically significant association with NPL. Research limitations/implications Subsequently, the stability of the banking sector in small developing countries such as Fiji is largely dependent on banks’ profitability, solvency, size in terms of market share and the presence of a learning curve and keeping a close tab on the interest rate spread between loans and deposits. Practical implications The paper highlights the specific factors determining NPL in small developing economy of Fiji. Originality/value This study is the first to examine specific factors determining NPLs with respect to small developing economies in the Oceania region.

In this study, we estimate inbound international tourism demand models at the individual source market-destination and overall destination levels for Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu from 2002Q1 to 2016Q2 and Samoa from 2002Q4 to 2015Q3. Tourism demand is measured by visitor arrivals, tourism prices, the source country's real GDP, tourism prices in substitute destinations, seasonality and structural breaks, all of which are considered plausible determinants. The models are estimated using the ARDL-bounds approach, structural breaks are identified using the Bai and Perron break test, and seasonality is tested using the US Census Bureau's X-13 ARIMA-SEATS methodology. The study is important because it presents new evidence on price, income, and substitute price sensitivity, word of mouth, seasonality, and structural-breaks effects in Pacific island destinations.

Diverse complications and controversial issues in the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) have been reported by many jurisdictions, prompting them not to adopt this set of standards. Conversely many jurisdictions have adopted or are in the process of adopting IFRS for SMEs. This study considers the impetus for successfully achieving accounting convergence with IFRS for SMEs in those jurisdictions. The possible transition issues that may arise when countries adopt IFRS for SMEs are also highlighted. Furthermore, to provide pioneering evidence on the problems accountants encounter when applying IFRS for SMEs, we conduct a survey on accounting practitioners in Fiji -an early adopter of this set of standards. Both the insights provided on the process of embracing IFRS for SMEs in Fiji and the opinions elicited from accountants highlight new dimensions to the inherent problems in IFRS for SMEs. Scant attention has been given to this issue so far; hence the empirical evidence provided by our study informs not only the global convergence of SME accounting but also the quality of the current suite of IFRS for SMEs.

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Kyrgyzstan and Macedonia have experienced a reasonable increase in remittances over the last twenty-five years. Subsequently, the extent to which remittances can be instrumental for economic development of the two countries has gained serious attention in recent development dialogues. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of remittances versus financial development on the economic growth of the two counties, complementing the burgeoning interest and focus on remittances for policy. The short-run and the long-run effects and the causality dynamics of remittances and financial development, are explored. The results show a long-run positive impact of remittances on the economic growth of these countries. The impact of financial development is negative, significant only for Kyrgyzstan and not statistically significant for Macedonia. The causality results show that remittances support economic growth for Kyrgyzstan, whereas economic growth appears to propel remittances for Macedonia.

In this paper, we explore the link between scientific and technical research and economic growth in China and USA over the sample period 1981-2012 using the extended Cobb-Douglas model with capital per worker and the quantity of scientific and technical journal articles (research publications) per worker. We examine the cointegration relationship and present the short-run and long-run results using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds procedure. Further, we examine the direction of causality between research publications per worker results and economic growth variables using the Toda and Yamamoto (J Econom 66(1-2):225-250, 1995) procedure. Our results indicate for both countries research publications per worker positively influence the output per worker both in the short-run and the long-run. The causality results for China indicate a bi-directional causality between research publications per worker and output per worker, duly emphasizing the mutually reinforcing effect. In case of USA, we note a unidirectional causation output per worker to research publications per worker indicating that output Granger cause research publications.

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