The effect of couples education on marital satisfaction in menopausal women

ABSTRACT

Inviting husbands to come to terms with women’s adaptation to the phenomenon of menopause is beneficial. The aim of this research was to uncover the effect of couples education on marital satisfaction. This study was performed on 80 menopausal women accompanied by their husbands. The intervention group received four sessions of couples education. The results showed that the mean increase in the rate of marital satisfaction after couples education in the intervention group was significantly higher than the control. Short-term couples education has a significant positive effect on marital satisfaction. Therefore, this counseling strategy can be integrated into health-care programs.     

Is There a “Pessimistic” Bias in Individual Beliefs? Evidence from a Simple Survey

It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540 individuals to the following question “Imagine that a coin will be flipped 10 times. Each time, if heads, you win $10\texttt{C}\!\!\!\rule[2.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt}\!\!\rule[3.3pt]{.4em}{.3pt}It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540 individuals to the following question “Imagine that a coin will be flipped 10 times. Each time, if heads, you win . How many times do you think that you will win?” The average answer is surprisingly about 3.9 which is below the average 5, and we interpret this as a pessimistic bias. We find that women are more “pessimistic” than men, as are old people relative to young. We also analyze how our notion of pessimism is related to more general notions of pessimism previously introduced in psychology.     

Alternative forms of charismatic leadership in the integration of mergers and acquisitions

It is becoming increasingly clear that post-merger and acquisition (M&A) performance, especially in terms of achieving the integration of merging firms, is strongly affected by organizational factors, such as leadership. This paper presents a theoretical model showing how alternative forms of charismatic leadership can be relevant to the implementation of M&As. A unique aspect of our conceptualization is that we recognize the distinction between charismatic leaders with more of a personalized versus socialized power motive, the behaviors emanating from each respective type, and likelihood of resulting effects on the post-combination organization of an M&A. We also propose that personalized charisma will result in an absorption strategy and accompanying stress, resistance to change, and turnover that vary in degree between acquiring and acquired firms. Conversely, socialized charisma will result in collaborative vision-formation and decision-making processes that will ultimately achieve transformation in both of the combining firms. We further argue that absorption strategies can result in effective integration of the target firm into the acquiring firm when the pre-merger condition of the former is unfavorable.     

The Impact of Migrant Remittances on School Attendance and Education Attainment: Evidence from Jordan

This paper evaluates the impact of migrant remittances on human capital accumulation among youth. An augmented human capital model with two outcomes, education attendance and education attainment, is estimated using a large nationally representative household survey from Jordan. Empirical results show that migrant remittance receipt has a positive effect on education attendance. This finding is obtained while controlling for other socio‐economic determinants of schooling behavior and is robust to censorship and endogeneity bias. The results also indicate that the magnitude of the remittance impact on both education outcomes is larger for men compared with that of women.     

A standard-based business repository for on-demand manufacturing execution systems

In manufacturing execution system (MES) projects, knowledge is heterogeneous and is applied partially in each software package. Consistency is therefore critical. Some standard business reference models exist, such as the IEC/ISO 62264 standard for MESs (also known as ISA S95), or the Supply Chain Operations Reference model for supply chain planning (SCP) and execution (SCE). These reference models have some overlaps. For example, traceability is part of both MES and SCE packages. A consortium of manufacturing software editors for industry has launched an ‘MES on demand’ platform using services from different packages. This paper presents the enriched business repository model built to facilitate business heterogeneity. It is used to align different business repositories (B–B alignment) and different business and software packages (B–S alignment). It likewise serves to align customer requirements with the repository (B–C alignment). The consortium platform is then ‘S95 compliant’ when knowledge supported by the different actors is included.     

A Unified Approach to Ordering Comparison of GPS Distributions with their Mixtures

Recently, several authors have been concerned with ordering comparison of known distributions of the family of generalized power series (GPS) distributions with their mixtures in various senses. In this article, we shall employ a unified approach and obtain similar results, more generally, for all members of the class of the GPS distributions. Some of the previous findings of Misra et al. (2003 Misra , N. , Singh , H. , Harner , E. J. ( 2003 ). Stochastic comparisons of Poisson and binomial random variables with their mixtures . Statist. Probab. Lett. 65 : 279 – 290 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Alamatsaz and Abbasi (2008 Alamatsaz , M. H. , Abbasi , S. ( 2008 ). Ordering comparison of negative binomial random variables with their mixtures . Statist. Probab. Lett. 78 : 2234 – 2239 . [Google Scholar]), and Aghababaei Jazi and Alamatsaz (2010 Aghababaei Jazi , M. , Alamatsaz , M. H. ( 2010 ). Ordering comparison of logarithmic series random variables with their mixtures . Commun. Statist. Theor. Meth. 39 : 3252 – 3263 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in this connection, then, follow as corollaries. Further, we have derived some more ordering comparison results.     

Economic Insecurity and Fertility: Does Income Volatility Impact the Decision to Remain a One-Child Family?

This study is the first to investigate the economic factors behind the recent rise of the one-child family in the United States. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that runs from 1968 to 2013 and a variety of different model specifications with state and year fixed effect, including logistic regression, linear probability, and Cox proportional hazard models, the study examined the effect of absolute income volatility on the decision of having an only-child family. The study found that an increase in the standard deviation of income is associated with a decrease in the probability of having a second child for mothers who are in the second quartile of income distribution.