Two Strong Families in Southern Europe? Re-Examining the Geography of Kinship Regimes Stemming from the Reciprocity Mechanisms Between Generations

David Reher??s hypothesis of a specific pattern of ??strong family?? characterizing the south of Europe is currently widely shared. Is a further specification possible, one that applies uniquely to the Mediterranean family? The supporting evidence from a large corpus of in-depth interviews of young people aged 30?C34 and living in the north and south of Italy seems to confirm the existence of a dual identity for the strong family, located in two distinct belts within southern Europe divided along a north?Csouth gradient. Pointers to the historical and anthropological roots of this cleavage between the two southern family patterns are sought in two major texts, Ibn Kaldun??s Mouqaddima and Mauss?? ??Essay on the Gift.??     

Interval Estimation for the Sortino Ratio and the Omega Ratio

In this article, asymptotic confidence intervals (CIs) for the Sortino and Omega ratios are proposed and analyzed. First, the CIs are derived under the assumption of temporal independence and identical distribution of returns. Later they are obtained assuming that the returns process is strictly stationary and α-mixing of a certain size. In order to evaluate the minimum sample size for a good coverage accuracy of the asymptotic CIs, a simulation study is performed. It is obtained that the minimum sample sizes are very high, especially under the more realistic assumption of not-iid returns.     

Minimum Divergence,Generalized Empirical Likelihoods,and Higher Order Expansions

This article studies the minimum divergence (MD) class of estimators for econometric models specified through moment restrictions. We show that MD estimators can be obtained as solutions to a tractable lower dimensional optimization problem. This problem is similar to the one solved by the generalized empirical likelihood estimators of Newey and Smith (2004 Newey , W. K. , Smith , R. J. ( 2004 ). Higher order properties of GMM and Generalized Empirical Likelihood estimators . Econometrica 72 : 219 – 255 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), but it is equivalent to it only for a subclass of divergences. The MD framework provides a coherent testing theory: tests for overidentification and parametric restrictions in this framework can be interpreted as semiparametric versions of Pearson-type goodness of fit tests. The higher order properties of MD estimators are also studied and it is shown that MD estimators that have the same higher order bias as the empirical likelihood (EL) estimator also share the same higher order mean square error and are all higher order efficient. We identify members of the MD class that are not only higher order efficient, but also, unlike the EL estimator, well behaved when the moment restrictions are misspecified.     

Gambling,geographical variations and deprivation: findings from the adult psychiatric morbidity survey

Gambling problems are prevalent in the UK, especially in the most deprived boroughs of the country. Individual-level characteristics may exist alongside a social and geographical gradient. The study aimed to establish whether living in specific geographic areas increases problem gambling likelihood. It used data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey. It adopted a twofold categorization distinguishing recreational from problem/pathological gambling. It used the 2004 Overall Index of Multiple Deprivation to measure deprivation of the district of residence, and primary sampling units, based on postcode sectors, to take into account area characteristics in multi-level mixed-effects regression models. The determinants of recreational gambling operated solely at the individual level. These included male sex, stable relationship and employment, though a number of clinical variables were also important: impulsivity, hazardous use or dependency on alcohol, and current smoking. In contrast, an appreciable proportion of the variance in problem/pathological gambling was explained by area-level clustering. Unlike recreational gamblers, problem/pathological gamblers appear to cluster in specific areas. Thus, there are grounds for restricting the location and density of gambling opportunities and for providing selective prevention programmes targeting geographic areas characterized by contextual determinants.     

A Systems View of Companies’ Communication in Online Social Environments

In order to enrich previous contributions interested in the identification of possible pathways to improve companies’ capabilities to better face the challenges imposed by increasing social and economic variety, this paper focuses attention on the role of companies’ communications in online social environments. Thanks to the adoption of systems thinking, the paper enlarges existing contributions on companies’ online communication by combining the research streams of signalling theory, capital need theory, and legitimacy theory. By building on a multi-disciplinary literature review, this paper identifies three variables to analyse the effectiveness of companies’ communication based on the use of social networks: the frequency, the instability, and the previous activities. Empirical research is proposed with reference to a sample composed by the 50 best performing European companies in terms of return on sales (ROS) (USD) in 2015 via the use of structural equation modelling (SEM). SEM is applied to explore the relationships among identified variables in companies’ online communication on Facebook and Instagram, and how those communications influence companies’ economic performance in terms of ROS.     

Do Quality of Services and Institutional Image Impact Students’ Satisfaction and Loyalty in Higher Education?

Social Indicators Research - The objective of this study is to investigate whether the quality of educational services and the university’s institutional image influence students’...     

Temporary Agency Workers in Italy: Alternative Techniques of Classification

Abstract. Cluster analysis and the classification tree technique are applied to investigate the relationship between the individual characteristics of Italian temporary help agency (THA) workers and their probability of achieving a temporary job. The application aims to show some advantages of these techniques with respect to traditional econometric tools. Sketches of the most common profiles among Italian THA workers are obtained as a result. Besides the typical THA worker pointed out by previous studies (young male workers, with a medium–high level of education, living in the Northern regions), two new profiles have been identified: the first comprising male manual workers with previous job experience, whose average age is over 30 and whose educational level is low; the second comprising young female workers with a medium–high level of education, working in the service sector or in the public sector. The results are compared with the more usual logit analysis and show their robustness.     

Demographic trends in less and least developed countries: Convergence or divergence?

Journal of Population Research - Many scholars share the assumption that demographic patterns in the world are converging over time. The present study analyses the temporal trends of specific...     

Restarting “Normal” Life after Covid-19 and the Lockdown: Evidence from Spain,the United Kingdom,and Italy

Social Indicators Research - In this article, we examine the expectations of the economic outlook, fear of the future, and behavioural change during the first Covid-19 wave, for three European...