Analysis of the spread of Rhynchophorus ferrugineus in an urban area,using GIS techniques: a study case in Central Italy

Urban Ecosystems - The spread of the red palm weevil is now a very severe problem on a global scale. In this paper, we investigate its spread during the 2007–2013 period in a coastal urban...     

Extending Bayesian back-calculation to estimate age and time specific HIV incidence

Lifetime Data Analysis - CD4-based multi-state back-calculation methods are key for monitoring the HIV epidemic, providing estimates of HIV incidence and diagnosis rates by disentangling their...     

The impact of the European Youth Guarantee on active labour market policies: A convergence analysis

The European Union’s (EU) Youth Guarantee aims to improve the labour market situation of young people. Rather than prescribing a uniform policy model, it acknowledges that supportive measures need to align with national, regional and local circumstances. It thus seeks to promote mutual policy learning through the open method of coordination. As an innovative measure, the EU has deployed funding programmes to support the domestic measures related to the Youth Guarantee. We therefore examined in this study whether this mix of recommendations and financial incentives has entailed a convergence of member state policies. Our analysis of policy outputs for the period 2007?2014 yields a mixed empirical picture. There is catching‐up convergence regarding policies’ sectoral coverage but increasing divergence concerning the number of adopted policy instruments. The first two years of financial incentives did not produce any effect on enhancing policy experimentation among less active member states. We offer an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation of these findings.     

Legitimacy theory may explain the failure of global adoption of IFRS: the case of Europe and the U.S.

We investigate the reasons why “adoption” of one set of globally accepted accounting standards is presently unachievable. By “adoption” we mean that a jurisdiction incorporates IFRS instantly as its national accounting as issued by the IASB. We state that the IASB has used a Legitimacy Theory strategy to gain acceptance of its standards by more than 120 countries across the globe but it has only gained pseudo-“adoption” (not as published by the IASB) of its standards by many countries. We contend that achieving policing and enforcement of its standards globally has proven to be empirically illusive. This legitimacy deficit may explain why convergence between the IASB and FASB is currently idle. We offer a possible solution to bridging the legitimacy gap of global adoption of IFRS. We propose an internationally respected regulator and suggest the IOSCO for this role through its participation in the IFRS Foundation Monitoring Board for policing and enforcement of IFRS for cross-listed firms reporting in compliance with IFRS so that the IASB’s output legitimacy may be achieved globally.     

Deliberative democracy in the real world,the contribution of the capability approach

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Amartya Sen’s writings, this article presents the capability approach to democracy and shows its relevance for the sociological reflection and research on democratic processes conceived as ways to convert individual preferences into collective norms or decisions. Two moments are key in this respect: the formation of individual preferences and their translation into collective norms in the course of public debates. The initial sections present Sen’s conception of democracy, particularly emphasizing its articulation with the notions of ‘positional objectivity’ and ‘conversion’. Then, this conception is compared with two other mechanisms that may be used to coordinate individual decisions or preferences, namely the market and idealistic views on deliberative democracy. The article emphasizes how the capability approach departs from these two conceptions with regard to the two key concepts of capacity to aspire and capability for voice. The final section shows how Sen’s notion of democracy may open up a new field for research, namely the sociological investigation of the informational (or knowledge) basis of democracy.     

Estimating a sensitive proportion through randomized response procedures based on auxiliary information

Randomized response techniques are widely employed in surveys dealing with sensitive questions to ensure interviewee anonymity and reduce nonrespondents rates and biased responses. Since Warner’s (J Am Stat Assoc 60:63–69, 1965) pioneering work, many ingenious devices have been suggested to increase respondent’s privacy protection and to better estimate the proportion of people, π _A , bearing a sensitive attribute. In spite of the massive use of auxiliary information in the estimation of non-sensitive parameters, very few attempts have been made to improve randomization strategy performance when auxiliary variables are available. Moving from Zaizai’s (Model Assist Stat Appl 1:125–130, 2006) recent work, in this paper we provide a class of estimators for π _A , for a generic randomization scheme, when the mean of a supplementary non-sensitive variable is known. The minimum attainable variance bound of the class is obtained and the best estimator is also identified. We prove that the best estimator acts as a regression-type estimator which is at least as efficient as the corresponding estimator evaluated without allowing for the auxiliary variable. The general results are then applied to Warner and Simmons’ model.     

Suspect community or suspect category? The impact of counter-terrorism as ‘policed multiculturalism’

How to think about the impact of counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation on ethnic and religious accommodation? Much of the literature draws on the concept of ‘suspect community’, suggesting it has primarily alienated the Muslim community, favouring an assimilationist model of ‘muscular liberalism’. In this article, while I consider the merits of the ‘suspect community’ hypothesis, I argue that it only partially accounts for the effects of counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation on multicultural societies. I contend that much of the literature has focused too narrowly on the discriminatory effects of counter-terrorist policies and has been unable to grasp the more insidious political effects of counter-terrorism policies based on the active participation and involvement of Muslims in their own policing. The main hypothesis of this paper is that rather than promoting ‘assimilation’, as the government would expect, or alienation, as the advocates of the ‘suspect community’ hypothesis would contend, counter-terrorist policies produce and reinforce a government of society in discrete and divided ethno-religious groups. Such ‘policed multiculturalism’—understood as the recognition and the management of diversity through a security perspective—has an important consequence in that it removes fundamental questions about pluralism from political debate, casting them instead in a depoliticised language of security.     

The demand for job protection: Some clues from behavioural economics

Radical differences in labour market regulations among countries that in other institutional respects are quite similar are still surprisingly frequent. Nonetheless, traditional theoretical analysis meets enormous difficulties in explaining these differences. The scope of our paper is to show that some clues from behavioural economics could be used to better theoretically treat this problem. Our argument is that workers are different, due to the effects of both culture and education. In particular, building on empirical evidence, we argue that loss aversion and hedonic adaptation are culturally-determined and country-specific aptitudes and that they may help explaining why workers, either employed or unemployed, ask for job protection and are willing to pay the cost of it. The main conclusion of our analysis is that, for poorly educated workers sharing a fatalist view of life, job protection can be more effective than public social expenditure. As a consequence, we suggest that countries with a poorly educated and fatalist workforce will be more prone to offer protection through job protection rather than public social expenditure, which is exactly what the empirical evidence shows.     

Ambivalences of the emotional logics of migration and family reunification: emotions,experiences and aspirations of Bangladeshi husbands and wives in Italy

This article analyses the relational and emotional logics of migration, separation and reunification of Bangladeshi families in Italy. Migrant husbands are separated from their wives, with whom they have had little family life due to their migration, and seek family reunification. Wives’ migration due to family reunification, however, means separating them from their familiar environments and social networks. For this reason, some wives press for onward migration to the UK, where they hope that a larger Bangladeshi community and more social and cultural opportunities may provide a more fulfilling life compared to what they experienced in Italy. However, this means uprooting their husbands once again. The article observes the emotionally divergent dimensions among men and women as an element that can transform and redefine biographical projects and the migration trajectories in Europe of Bangladeshi families in Italy.