NEIGHBORHOOD DISORDER AND INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY CAPACITY: HOW INCIVILITIES INFORM THREE DOMAINS OF PSYCHOSOCIAL ASSESSMENT

This article examines contextual models to bring together the disorder and community capacity perspectives, since both are grounded in social (dis)organization theory and cumulative causation. We analyze how individual and neighborhood characteristics, social and physical disorder, and crime affect three individual community capacity outcomes: city quality of life, neighborhood safety, and household moving intentions. The “broken windows” downward spiral suggests that neighborhood incivilities may decrease multiple psychosocial assessments, or, individual community capacities. Consistent with prior research, we find that social and physical disorder decreases all three outcomes. Second, we find that both disorders also mediate neighborhood effects, including socioeconomic status and residential stability. Third, these direct and indirect disorder effects are not altered by prior victimization or neighborhood crime rates. Reducing disorder will, in turn, improve three distinct domains and geographic scales of individual community capacity, and can also reduce the adverse effects of other local area capacity deficits.     

A geostatistical approach to define guidelines for radon prone area identification

Radon is a natural radioactive gas known to be the main contributor to natural background radiation exposure and the major leading cause of lung cancer second to smoking. Indoor radon concentration levels of 200 and 400 Bq/m³ are reference values suggested by the 90/143/Euratom recommendation, above which mitigation measures should be taken in new and old buildings, respectively, to reduce exposure to radon. Despite this international recommendation, Italy still does not have mandatory regulations or guidelines to deal with radon in dwellings. Monitoring surveys have been undertaken in a number of western European countries in order to assess the exposure of people to this radioactive gas and to identify radon prone areas. However, such campaigns provide concentration values in each single dwelling included in the sample, while it is often necessary to provide measures of the pollutant concentration which refer to sub-areas of the region under study. This requires a realignment of the spatial data from the level at which they are collected (points) to the level at which they are necessary (areas). This is known as change of support problem.In this paper, we propose a methodology based on geostatistical simulations in order to solve this problem and to identify radon prone areas which may be suggested for national guidelines.     

I AM IMMORTAL

I suggest a model to forecast life expectancy based on the electrocardiogram signal. I show how the heart electrical activity can be decomposed in the state‐space and that the suggested model has superior out‐of‐sample properties compared to a set of alternatives. When the model is used to forecast my own electrocardiogram, a striking result arises: the n‐step ahead forecast remains bounded and positive even after one googol period. Therefore, my life expectancy tends to infinity implying that I am immortal. (JEL I10, I19)     

Do women directors contribute to R&D? The role of critical mass and expert power

Journal of Management and Governance - The paper provides insights into the implications for innovation input of having women on company boards. It sheds light on the effects of critical mass and...     

Mind the Covid-19 crisis: An evidence-based implementation of Next Generation EU

This paper develops an evidence-based approach to the selection and prioritisation of Next Generation EU (NGEU) projects for timely implementation and impact of the Recovery Plan for Europe. The analysis of a large sample of projects, currently funded by the European Union (EU) with the same priorities and objectives of NGEU, suggests that a timely implementation should be driven – within the EU Commission coordination framework – by national governments liaising directly with their citizens through participatory procedures, involving relevant stakeholders. Simplified implementation procedures with clear spatial targeting and limited involvement of regional authorities are necessary conditions for the avoidance of implementation delays.     

Handling the effect of non-response in graphical models for longitudinal data

In this paper we investigated the use of attrition weights to cope with non-response when selecting graphical chain models for longitudinal data. We proposed a parametric bootstrap approach to account for the extra variability introduced by the estimation of the weights and compared this with results using standard test procedures.     

New perspectives on board research: changing the research agenda

Scholars and practitioners have recently devoted considerable attention to boards of directors, but far more research is needed. We still know little about how boards actually work and how their behavior may be improved to contribute to value creation. During more than two decades agency theory has been the dominant theory in studies about boards of directors. When relaxing some of the assumptions in agency theory several new pathways for new research arise. To present new perspectives on board research we follow in this essay some of the pathways arising from relaxing agency theory assumptions about complete contracts. Alternative theoretical approaches, research questions and methods are suggested.     

Measuring Progress: A Comparison of the GDP,HDI, GS and the RIE

The current paper constructs a progress measurement appropriate for measuring multiple and different dimensions of progress. The paper is not meant to be a detailed discussion of the framework but rather a demonstrated application of the measure. The constructed resource-infrastructure-environment progress measure employs a non-monetary evaluation adopting a weighting technique based on public opinion. The proposed index is assessed from a single summary standpoint. The aggregation method is evaluated via a z-score standardisation technique. The progress index is applied to three countries that are representative of different clusters. They are Australia (mid-industrialised nation), Mexico (emerging economy), and the US (highly industrialised nation). These selected countries provide an opportunity to highlight any divergences that may exist in their perceived economic strength. The results showed Australia as consistently having the highest levels of progress, closely followed by Mexico and then the US.