“I Dumped My Husband For a Turkish Toyboy”

In this article, we analyse how British tabloid newspapers represent relationships between mature British women and the younger Turkish toyboy lovers they meet (and sometimes look for) on their holiday; a practice that is often considered as the female counterpart to male sex tourism, albeit labelled differently as “romance tourism.” Employing a combination of thematic, lexical, narrative, and visual analysis, we examine how the British tabloids make sense of the contradicting social categories and power relations at play in these encounters, in particular with respect to age, gender, nation, and economic position. We consider these contradictions as typical for the intersectionality of gender identities, and use the tabloid stories about romance tourism as a means to study how such intersectionality becomes manifest in everyday practices. We find that the tabloids construct only one dimension of identity as key to women's lives, that is the one of motherhood and more abstractly of caring for others. In addition, they present women as highly vulnerable to exploitation by foreign, exotic others, who are portrayed either as evil con men or—in the sporadic upbeat, happy-ending story we found—as dependent and passive objects of women's desires.     

Breast feeding,fertility and infant mortality: An analysis of some early German data

Concern about high infant mortality and its suspected connection with the lack of breast-feeding stimulated the collection of statistics about the frequency of breast-feeding in several German states during the late roth and early 20th centuries. Contrary to the assumption that universal and extended breast-feeding is customary among rural agricultural populations, large regional variations existed both in the proportion of children who were breast-fed and in the average duration of the period for which they were breast-fed. An analysis of these data in connection with statistics of infant mortality and marital fertility confirms the association between high infant mortality and the absence of breast-feeding. An hypothesis linking breast-feeding and fertility, however, is not confirmed. Marital fertility appears to be much more closely associated with infant mortality than with breast-feeding.     

Error and inference: an outsider stand on a frequentist philosophy

This paper is an extended review of the book Error and Inference, edited by Deborah Mayo and Aris Spanos, about their frequentist and philosophical perspective on testing of hypothesis and on the criticisms of alternatives like the Bayesian approach.     

Where I Belong: Identification Processes of Young Volunteers in Super-Diverse Cities

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In the context of super-diverse cities, scholars and policy makers are increasingly interested in the potential of...     

Periodisierung von Erfolgskomponenten zur Steuerung langfristiger Aufträge — Completed-Contract-Methode versus Percentage-of-Completion-Methode —

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag analysiert die Steuerung langfristiger Auftr?ge auf Basis eines dynamischen LEN-Modells. Zentraler Entscheidungstatbestand bei langfristigen Auftr?gen ist die Auswahl der Methode zur Erfassung langfristiger Auftr?ge. Grunds?tzlich kommen hierzu die Completed-Contract-Methode und die Percentage-of-Completion-Methode in Betracht, welche Gestaltungsspielr?ume bei der Periodisierung von Erfolgskomponenten er?ffnet. Die aktuelle Bedeutung dieser Fragestellung ergibt sich durch die für kapitalmarktorientierte, bisher HGB-bilanzierende Unternehmen seit dem Jahr 2005 vorgeschriebene Anwendung der IAS/IFRS. Die modelltheoretische Analyse zeigt, dass in der Partialbetrachtung der Steuerungswirkungen die Percentage-of-Completion-Methode der Completed-Contract-Methode überlegen ist. Somit ist bei langfristigen Auftr?gen zumindest aus Steuerungsgesichtspunkten der übergang von HGB zu IAS/IFRS positiv zu beurteilen.

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Accrual accounting for long-term construction contracts — Completed-contract-method versus percentage-of-completion-method —

Summary  We consider long-term construction contracts within the context of of a dynamic LEN-model. From a practical perspective, the percentage-of-completion method corresponds with the idea of accrual accounting, while the completed-contract method follows the realisation principle. We show that the percentage-of-completion method is superior to the completed-contract method in providing decision-influencing information. Also, determining the degree of completion via the input- or the output-oriented method follow as knife edge solutions to the principal’s problem. Thus, we conclude that the transition from German accounting rules to the IAS/IFRS is beneficial from an incentive perspective in the specific case of long-term construction contracts.

Für hilfreiche Kommentare danken wir einem anonymen Gutachter sowie Renate Hecker, Stephan Meisenzahl und Teilnehmern des VII. Symposiums zur ?konomischen Analyse der Unternehmung der GEABA, Bielefeld 2006.     

Dynamic capacity adjustments with reactive customers

In this paper we develop a behavioural model in which customers come and go based on their perception of waiting time (relative to other facilities) while managers gradually adjust the capacity of the facility based on their perception of demand. We explicitly account for the difference in access to information between existing and potential customers, which implies that the perception of potential customers lags the perception of current customers. We investigate the outcome of the interaction between these simultaneous dynamic decision processes, and in particular the impact of the lags created by the perception formation process and the time to implement desired changes in capacity. These multiple delays may result in customers and service provider being out of step: customers walk away just as the service provider manages to bring extra capacity online.     

Specific relationships between psychosocial job conditions and job-related stress: A three-level analytic approach

This cross-sectional questionnaire study presents a multi-level analysis on 2565 workers in 188 departments in 36 organizations in the Netherlands. A three-level model is used in which individual workers are nested within departments, which in turn are nested within organizations. Research questions concern (1) the amount and distribution of variance in job-related stress explained for the three levels in the study (individuals, departments, organizations), and (2) the specificity of relationships between psychosocial job demands and job-related stress in the three-level model. Well-being showed slightly more raw variance to be explained at supra-individual levels than strain. The full regression model explained about 35% of the total variance in both work-related strain and well-being. Psychosocial job conditions did not exceed the expected amount of 10 to 15% contribution to this explained variance. These results do not differ from comparable studies that do not use multi-level analysis. The variance distribution in the full model, however, showed unexplained variance to be located at the individual level for both strain and well-being, and at the departmental level only for well-being. This last finding shows a direction for possible improvement of work stress models. Specificity of relationships was also shown: psychological job demands were more strongly related to strain, whereas job content variables (i.e. job variety, job control) were more strongly related to well-being. Results also suggested that social support was more strongly associated with well-being than with strain. Well-being appeared to have a more widely varying range of predictors than strain.     

DO TAXES ON SODA AND SUGARY DRINKS WORK? SCANNER DATA EVIDENCE FROM BERKELEY AND WASHINGTON STATE

We study two beverage taxes: the SSB tax of 1¢/oz in the city of Berkeley (in effect since 2015) and the temporary 2010 soda tax of 0.166¢/oz in Washington State. Using detailed scanner data, we find that prices in Washington reacted sharply and promptly (often by a larger magnitude than the tax), whereas retail prices in Berkeley reacted marginally (by less than 30% the magnitude of the tax). Further, we find a 5% volume reduction in Washington but fail to detect an effect in Berkeley. We discuss the possible causes for the discrepancy in effectiveness, in particular cross‐border shopping. (JEL H22, L66, I18)     

Populism and the double liberalism: exploring the links

Theory and Society - The rise of populism in the West is often depicted as opposition to a “double liberalism”, which is economic and cultural in tandem. In this optic, neoliberalism...