This paper evaluates the factors that influence the medal count of a country
at the Olympic Games, using the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a reference for
the analysis. The paper identifies and models a number of socioeconomic
variables that influence a country’s performance at the Olympic Games
and its ability to win medals. The results indicate that size of population,
GDP per capita, political structure, hosting advantage, literacy levels and
winning medals in a previous Olympics have a significant impact on

The potential effects of the US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) on
Caribbean food exports to the United States are discussed. We use trade
data in order to elucidate trends and a theoretical Value Chain Analysis
framework. Our results indicate that the US will continue to be an
important market for Caribbean exporters and that FSMA will impose
food-safety requirements such as traceability and third-party certification.
However, this tightening of food safety standards may open a window of

This paper empirically examines the relationship between a firm’s financial
success and its innovation strategy, that is, how it utilises or does not
utilise professional service workers and researchers. Our empirical analysis
uses a survey administered in 2006 to 324 Jamaican business and
governmental organisations. We empirically investigate two questions: 1)
what factors determine a firm’s innovation strategy; and, 2) which
innovation strategies increase the financial success of firms. We find that

The primary objective of this paper is to offer strategic policy
considerations with the aim of boosting the industrial competency and
market development potential of Caribbean firms. Given that tourism, the
region’s largest industry, has experienced significant growth and has
performed well, in general, during the last 30 years or so, the discussion
relies heavily on the performance of agriculture, manufacturing and trade.
The principal conclusion is that institutional policy intervention ought to

This essay offers an interpretive textual analysis of newspaper articles,
music lyrics and internet commentaries on skin bleaching in Jamaica, with
a particular focus on dancehall artist Vybz Kartel. I argue that bleached
bodies exemplify a liminal state of embodiment and are not definable
within normative racial and gender frameworks that conceptualise race
and gender as discrete, static identities that are clearly visible on the body.
By disrupting those frameworks, bleached bodies can create room for

Despite efforts to acknowledge the structural drivers of HIV, programmatic
responses continue to be framed by ideas of personal risk, individual
autonomy and moral responsibility. HIV prevention in particular is
severely constrained by stigma that deters openness about serostatus and
promotes public and private shame and blame. This paper examines
experiences of stigma in relation to HIV and associated sexual and social
characteristics in Barbados and the English-speaking Caribbean. To

The often-reported finding that religious persons are more prejudiced
towards homosexual persons than non-religious persons seems paradoxical
considering that most major religions purport equal opportunity and
tolerance for all people. Using a correlational design, researchers analysed
the self-reported attitudes of 204 male and female undergraduate students
aged 18 to 34 years at the University of the West Indies. Results confirmed
that even in a multi-religious environment, the highly religious were most

Overcrowding in hospitals is a major problem across the world. In the
Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago, however, this situation is
deplorable and inhumane, affecting predominantly the sick, the elderly and
the poor. Through systematic empirical analysis, the hypothesis that
overcrowding would be resolved by increasing the number of beds was
tested at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH). Using two decades
of hospital utilisation reports, it was found that even when medical

The objective of this study was to describe the range of strategies used by
Jamaican caregivers in managing their children’s behaviours. Prior to an
intervention, the primary caregivers of 138 aggressive children, 6- to -8
years old, from 4 primary schools in Kingston, were interviewed about the
strategies they used when their children misbehaved as well as when they
behaved acceptably. The caregivers reported using a variety of harsh and
inappropriate strategies when their children misbehaved; however, they

This essay examines the making of the postcolonial divide between the two
Kingstons with emphasis on the habits and dispositions of the city’s less
frequently studied Uptown elites. The paper briefly reviews Kingston’s
twentieth-century demographic and geographic expansion; calls attention
to a two-tiered system of institutions and services created to accompany
this expansion; and underscores patterns of diminished social contact and
interaction across the class divide consequent on the establishment of these