Maux du travail : dégradation, recomposition ou illusion ?

In recent years, the attention of French public opinion has been focused on the noxious effects of new ways of organizing work. Stress, “suffering”, burnout, psychosocial risks and suicides are topics that have brought experts, the media and politicians into action. What do the social sciences have to say about this? Among the several reactions presented, the principal contrast arises between those who analyze the ills of work as “social constructions” and those who see them as the implications of a trend toward intensifying job-related activities.     

Diversity of romantic experiences in late adolescence and their contribution to identity formation

Romance constitutes a central experience in adolescence, which can take several forms including (a) serious romance with a steady partner, (b) casual and short‐lived dating, and (c) pending experiences of romantic thoughts and attempts. Using a three‐way longitudinal design, the present study examined the gender differences and developmental changes of these romantic experiences, and their cross‐lagged associations with identity processes, throughout one year in late adolescence. 389 students (63% girls) filled out questionnaires about their romantic experiences and identity processes. Girls reported more serious romance than did boys, who reported more casual dating and pending experiences. Serious romance increased over the year for both genders whereas casual dating and pending experiences continued to rise only for boys. The cross‐lagged model highlighted that serious romantic experience positively predicted identity commitments and exploration in depth whereas identity exploration in breadth positively predicted casual dating. This pattern was stable over the three time points and across gender and age groups. Overall, this study invites consideration of more diverse romantic experiences than those associated with tangible involvement. We discuss the contribution of romantic experiences to the identity dynamic.     

Purchasing Power Parities of Currencies and Real Expenditures from the International Comparison Program: Recent Results and Uses

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative designed to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) that can be used as currency converters to compare the performance of countries around the world, thereby providing in-depth views of the distribution of resources worldwide. The 2011 round of the ICP was leveraged on the successful outcome of the 2005 round that included 146 countries, introducing various methodological improvements. The summary report and results from the 2011 round were released in April 2014 and provided PPPs, price levels indices, and expenditures in PPP terms for the GDP and major aggregates for 199 participating countries. More detailed results were released in June 2014 and a final comprehensive report in October 2014. The final report provided a more in-depth analysis of volume and per capita indices. The results stirred a strong debate among the user community because of their finding that the world has become more equal than previously thought. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the main results and findings of ICP 2011, its governance framework and partnership with the Eurostat-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) PPP program, and the major methodological innovations that were implemented. The paper reviews the major uses of the PPPs generated by the ICP 2011 and the Eurostat-OECD PPP program, and concludes with thoughts about the future of the ICP.     

Wavelet‐based estimators for mixture regression

We consider a process that is observed as a mixture of two random distributions, where the mixing probability is an unknown function of time. The setup is built upon a wavelet‐based mixture regression. Two linear wavelet estimators are proposed. Furthermore, we consider three regularizing procedures for each of the two wavelet methods. We also discuss regularity conditions under which the consistency of the wavelet methods is attained and derive rates of convergence for the proposed estimators. A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to illustrate the performance of the estimators. Various scenarios for the mixing probability function are used in the simulations, in addition to a range of sample sizes and resolution levels. We apply the proposed methods to a data set consisting of array Comparative Genomic Hybridization from glioblastoma cancer studies.     

Risk Perception of the "Mad Cow Disease" in France: Determinants and Consequences

Since 1996, when bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was assessed as a possible human transmissible disease, a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), French people have entered into a long period of fear and avoidance of beef and bovine byproducts, which produced an unprecedented collapse in the beef market. This article deals with the perceived risk of the "mad cow disease" (MCD) in the French general population. Two surveys were conducted on a representative sample of the adult population, the first one in 2000 during the peak of the crisis and the second one 13 months later in a quieter period. The main assumption we made was that changes in beef consumption are strongly related to the perceived risk of MCD, which we defined as people's cognitive and affective responses to hazard. Our objective was to identify the determinants and consequences of this perceived risk and to compare them in different sociopolitical contexts. The results issued from a bivariate and multivariate analysis show that: (i) the distribution of most of the variables significantly related to the perceived risk identified in the first survey had changed in the second survey, in relation with the reduction of worry and the resumption of national beef consumption; (ii) the propensity for self-protection through avoiding or ceasing beef eating was more related to feelings of worry than to subjective vCJD risk assessments; and (iii) the main determinant of less avoidance to beef products was the preference for beef, a feeling identified prior to emergence of the risk of MCD, remaining unchanged in various contexts.     

Manufacturing feature-based cost management system: a case study in Brazil

Feature costing is a topic of recent discussion related to cost management systems (CMSs) aimed at understanding how product features influence production process costs. It raises as a key issue in mass customisation environments where a single product model can present hundreds of menu options. In this study, we explore the concept of feature costing beyond the use of activity-based costing (ABC). We propose a CMS based on features and common elements as costing objects instead of products. In our model, we use the unit of production effort method to organise the direct manufacturing costs, ABC method to address the indirect cost and the standard methods to compute raw materials costs. We illustrate the method in the production of bus seats in a Brazilian manufacturing company. This study gives different perspectives to the international academic community on the use of a different CMS used by many Brazilian companies.     

Machine Learning Methods as a Tool for Predicting Risk of Illness Applying Next‐Generation Sequencing Data

Next‐generation sequencing (NGS) data present an untapped potential to improve microbial risk assessment (MRA) through increased specificity and redefinition of the hazard. Most of the MRA models do not account for differences in survivability and virulence among strains. The potential of machine learning algorithms for predicting the risk/health burden at the population level while inputting large and complex NGS data was explored with Listeria monocytogenes as a case study. Listeria data consisted of a percentage similarity matrix from genome assemblies of 38 and 207 strains of clinical and food origin, respectively. Basic Local Alignment (BLAST) was used to align the assemblies against a database of 136 virulence and stress resistance genes. The outcome variable was frequency of illness, which is the percentage of reported cases associated with each strain. These frequency data were discretized into seven ordinal outcome categories and used for supervised machine learning and model selection from five ensemble algorithms. There was no significant difference in accuracy between the models, and support vector machine with linear kernel was chosen for further inference (accuracy of 89% [95% CI: 68%, 97%]). The virulence genes FAM002725, FAM002728, FAM002729, InlF, InlJ, Inlk, IisY, IisD, IisX, IisH, IisB, lmo2026, and FAM003296 were important predictors of higher frequency of illness. InlF was uniquely truncated in the sequence type 121 strains. Most important risk predictor genes occurred at highest prevalence among strains from ready‐to‐eat, dairy, and composite foods. We foresee that the findings and approaches described offer the potential for rethinking the current approaches in MRA.     

Does a firm’s exposure to ethical failures matter to financial markets? A governance perspective

This paper investigates if a firm’s ethical reputation, in conjunction with its governance, affects its standing within financial markets. A firm`s ethical reputation, as measured by ethical failures, arises from its involvement in ethical violations and incidents while a comprehensive index proxies for governance. We assess a firm’s standing within financial markets through two complementary perspectives, i.e., the level of information asymmetry between managers and investors, as inferred from analyst forecast dispersion and analyst forecast error, and the relation between a firm’s earnings and its stock market valuation or return (value relevance). Our results suggest that a firm`s ethical reputation affects financial analysts’ forecasts as well as the stock market value assigned to its reported earnings. Moreover, it appears that corporate governance moderates such relations, with strong (weak) governance compensating for a weak (strong) ethical reputation. Overall, our evidence shows that ethical failures do not seem to pay.     

Hazardous journey in intimacy: HIV transmission risk behaviors of young men who are victims of past sexual abuses and who have sexual relations with men

The aim of this research was to explore the behavioral patterns and dynamics that may increase vulnerability towards HIV transmission among young men who have been sexually molested as children and who have sexual relations with men. In recent years, researchers have found that a larger number of gay or bisexual men have been sexually abused as children than other men. In this study, we wanted to explore the possible links between sexual victimization of young men and risky sexual behaviors related to HIV transmission among these men.