Gambling in Western and Eastern Europe: The Example of Hungary

The history of gambling in post-socialist countries is noticeably different from that of other countries in Europe. The goal of this study was therefore twofold: Firstly, to systematically review all European epidemiological studies related to excessive gambling in the general adult population, and secondly, to provide an overview of the state of gambling in Hungary based on the first ever nationwide representative survey, setting the results against the backdrop of the earlier European studies. A systematic review was carried out of European gambling studies which focus on a representative adult general population. Hungarian data was obtained from the National Survey on Addiction Problems in Hungary general adult population survey (N = 2,710). Pathological gambling was measured by the South Oaks Gambling Screen. Lifetime prevalence of excessive gambling (problem and pathological gambling) in the general adult population of European countries varies between 1.1% (Italy and Spain) and 6.5% (Estonia). In Hungary, the prevalence of problem gambling is 1.9%, with pathological gambling at 1.4%. The socio-demographic characteristics of the results are similar to those of other European countries. Using epidemiological data from the general adult populations of two post-socialist nations, it was possible to compare the results with data from 12 other European countries. Based on the data available, the extremely rapid liberation of the gambling market in the post-socialist countries has led to a similarly swift escalation in associated gambling problems.     

The Political Role of Service Delivery in State‐Building: Exploring the Relevance of European History for Developing Countries

Concerns about failed and fragile states have put state‐ and nation‐building firmly on the academic and policy agenda, but the crucial role of public services in this process has remained underexplored. The 1960s and ‘70s generated a substantial set of literature that is largely missing from current writing. It identified state penetration, standardisation and accommodation as key processes in the state‐ and nation‐building sequence. This article analyses these three processes in Western Europe in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and the role of public services therein, to explore how they may help us to understand the success and failure of state‐ and nation‐building in developing countries and fragile states.     

Methodology for the Calculation of Annualized Incremental Risks in Systems of Dams

In the past few years, the field of dam safety has approached risk informed methodologies throughout the world and several methodologies and programs are appearing to aid in the systematization of the calculations. The most common way of implementing these calculations is through the use of event trees, computing event probabilities, and incremental consequences. This methodology is flexible enough for several situations, but its generalization to the case of systems of several dams is complex and its implementation in a completely general calculation methodology presents some problems. Retaining the event tree framework, a new methodology is proposed to calculate incremental risks. The main advantage of this proposed methodology is the ease with which it can be applied to systems of several dams: with a single risk model that describes the complete system and with a single calculation the incremental risks of the system can be obtained, being able to allocate the risk of each dam and of each failure mode. The article shows how both methodologies are equivalent and also applies them to a case study.     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Gay Becker, The Elusive Embryo: How Women and Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg, The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000 Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years Elisabeth Croll, Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development in Asia Barbara Entwisle and Gail E. Henderson (Eds.), Re‐Drawing Boundaries: Work, Households, and Gender in China David T. Graham and Nana K. Poku (Eds.), Migration, Globalisation and Human Security Paul Harrison and Fred Pearce, AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment Russell King, Paolo De Mas, and Jan Mansvelt Beck (Eds.), Geography, Environment and Development in the Mediterranean Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and United Nations Population Fund, Low Fertility and Policy Responses to Issues of Ageing and Welfare National Assessment Synthesis Team, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Report for the US Global Change Research Program Jacques Vaixin and Thérèse Locoh (Eds.), Population et développement en Tunisie: La métamorphose     

Emergency Planning for Hazardous Industrial Areas: A Brazilian Case Study

One of the characteristics of modern industrial development is the emergence of a new typology of accidents whose effects can be spread, in space as well as in time, well beyond the borders of the installations where they occur, sometimes impacting the local population and the environment in a catastrophic fashion. This is the result of a number of factors that have changed the risk profile of modern industrial activities. For a number of reasons, the developing countries have proved to be more vulnerable to industrial disasters. Three of the most catastrophic industrial accidents—Bhopal, San Juan de Ixhuatepec, and Cubatão—occurred in developing countries, claiming thousands of lives. During the 1970s and 1980s the higher degree of public visibility of industrial hazards as a result of serious accidents, led to the creation, especially in the more industrialized countries, of regulations for greater control over industrial activities, either by means of new laws or by updating existing legislation. Some of these regulations were designed to improve the response to accidents with potential impacts outside the industrial sites. This article attempts to describe the current status and identify the shortcomings of off‐site emergency planning for hazardous industrial areas in Brazil. The most important problems are the lack of specific legislation and the absence of awareness and active participation of public authorities. The experience of an off‐site emergency planning process for a Brazilian industrial area is presented. This experience illustrates how difficult it is to prepare and implement emergency planning processes in an industrializing country.     

La psicología de la paz en los Estados Unidos

Resumen

Dentro del estudio de los procesos sociocognitivos implicados en la conducta de salud, el objetivo de este estudio es obtener la percepción de rol de las personas implicadas en la relación del profesional de la salud con el paciente. Así como su asociación con el cumplimiento terapéutico del paciente. Cien pacientes de hipertensión arterial esencial y cien profesionales de la salud (médicos y de enfermería) respondieron a los cuestionarios especialmente elaborados para este trabajo.

El cumplimiento terapéutico lo valoramos mediante una medida combinada de autoinforme y consecución de los objetivos terapéuticos. Los resultados mostraron que el rol del paciente podría evaluarse por los profesionales sanitarios en función de tres dimensiones fundamentales (obediencia/resistencia hacia la asistencia sanitaria; confianza/desconfianza hacia los profesionales sanitarios y cumplimiento/incumplimiento hacia los tratamientos terapéuticos). El rol de médico percibido por los pacientes se definió de forma más amplia y exigente que el rol de la enfermera. Y por último, observamos diferencias entre los pacientes cumplidores y los incumplidores respecto a algunas características atribuidas al rol del médico.     

Influence diagnostics in a multivariate normal regression model with general parameterization

Patriota and Lemonte [24] introduced a quite general multivariate normal regression model. This model considers that the mean vector and the covariance matrix share the same vector of parameters. In this paper we present some influence assessment for this model, such as the local influence, total local influence of an individual and generalized leverage which are discussed. Additionally, the normal curvatures for local influence studies are derived under some perturbation schemes.     

The Kumaraswamy generalized gamma distribution with application in survival analysis

We introduce and study the so-called Kumaraswamy generalized gamma distribution that is capable of modeling bathtub-shaped hazard rate functions. The beauty and importance of this distribution lies in its ability to model monotone and non-monotone failure rate functions, which are quite common in lifetime data analysis and reliability. The new distribution has a large number of well-known lifetime special sub-models such as the exponentiated generalized gamma, exponentiated Weibull, exponentiated generalized half-normal, exponentiated gamma, generalized Rayleigh, among others. Some structural properties of the new distribution are studied. We obtain two infinite sum representations for the moments and an expansion for the generating function. We calculate the density function of the order statistics and an expansion for their moments. The method of maximum likelihood and a Bayesian procedure are adopted for estimating the model parameters. The usefulness of the new distribution is illustrated in two real data sets.     

我国股市泡沫的制度分析

根据信息经济学和制度经济学的一般原理 ,从制度层面分析我国股市体制性泡沫的制度成因、作用机理及影响 ,提出了相应的对策建议     

The impact of attitude strength on customer-oriented priority setting by decision-makers: An empirical investigation

A key question in marketing decision-making pertains to what makes decision-makers focus on various types of information in different ways. Particularly in relation to a key marketing and management variable such as customer satisfaction this is an important issue. Costly derived customer satisfaction measures need to provide customer-oriented guidance regarding where to prioritise. Traditional research on intelligence use has mainly focused on objective research attributes, such as research quality. In this article, however, we will adopt the idea that decision-makers weigh information differently based on their perception of its relevance. With respect to crucial customer satisfaction information this represents an exciting, but nevertheless unexplored field of research. The results of latent variable modelling show that the strength of decision-makers’ attitudes toward customer satisfaction leads to a differentiated usage of satisfaction intelligence. By taking this into consideration, management and intelligence providers will be able to more effectively disseminate customer satisfaction information and facilitate a more customer-oriented perspective within firms.