Flames and Debates: Do Social Media Affect Satisfaction with Democracy?

Media plays an important role in defining the quality of democracy in consolidated democracy. Internet, in turn, can wield effects on democracy and many scholars have investigated such relationship. Moving from this literature we use Eurobarometer data to estimate the effect of Internet on the satisfaction with the functioning of democracy among European citizens. The results show that Internet usage, per se, has no effect on the satisfaction with democracy. However, the consumption of online news can make the difference, even though this effect is positive when users consume news from online traditional media while social media has a negative effect, which is mediated by the level of online disagreement and the potential emergence of flames.     

Parental health and child behavior: evidence from parental health shocks

This study examines the importance of parental health in the development of child behavior during early childhood. Our analysis is based on child psychometric measures from a longitudinal German dataset, which tracks mothers and their newborns up to age six. We identify major changes in parental health (shocks) and control for a variety of initial characteristics of the child including prenatal conditions. The results are robust to placebo regressions of health shocks that occur after the outcomes are measured. Our findings point to negative effects of maternal health shocks on children’s emotional symptoms, conduct problems and hyperactivity. We estimate that maternal health shocks worsen outcomes by as much as 0.9 standard deviations. In contrast, paternal health seems to be less relevant to children’s behavioral skills.     

Symbolic Interactionism and Social Network Analysis: An Uncertain Encounter

The aim of this article is to respond to the question of whether social networks represent a possible terrain of application and investment for interactionist research. The answer to that question is, without a doubt, affirmative. What appears to be truly problematic, if not completely improbable, is that this investment can come about through a “coming together” of symbolic interactionism and social network analysis. The vocational focus that has evolved in the two perspectives, the conceptual frameworks and methods used for the study of social interactions and their interlinking in relational networks, presents aspects of extreme differentiation that render a possible convergence quite difficult.     

SEZ Proliferation in India: Are the Objectives Being Realized?

This paper analyzes if the industrial policy framework of the Indian Government with regard to the proliferation of SEZs has satisfied its aims and objectives. The analysis however, shows otherwise. The empirical results show that the policy of the Indian Government has been lopsided, wherein the concentration of SEZs has increased in States which face lower levels of unemployment and a comparably high level of FDI inflow. Further, the concentration of the SEZs has been restricted majorly to the IT industry resulting in rigidity in the export mix. Policy implications hint towards a diversification of the SEZ industry portfolio and in increasing the size and therefore, the economic impact of these zones.     

Valuing and Integrating Informal Care as a Core Component of Long-Term Care for Older People: A Comparison of Recent Developments in Italy and Spain

The international long-term care (LTC) debate has recently been focusing on how to strengthen home care provision. In this regard, a major role has been played by informal care and how to best integrate it in a holistic care approach. Italy and Spain, usually labeled as “familialist” or “family-based” care models, have been promoting national reforms or actions to support the integration of “informal” actors into the overall LTC system. Through a comparative review of recent trends observed in the two care regimes, this article aims at contributing to improve our cross-national understanding of how LTC is changing across Europe, identifying the basic approaches adopted in Italy and Spain and highlighting both their strengths and drawbacks.     

On price data elicitation: A laboratory investigation

There is abundant literature in experimental research on decision making under risk, which compares, and ranks subjects’ preferences on the basis of some elicitation method. The present paper performs a similar analysis in order to compare them. Since pricing data lead in many cases to some anomalies (i.e. status quo bias, endowment effect) we examine three mechanisms to elicit price preferences: willingness-to-pay in a second-price auction, willingness-to-accept in a second-price auction, and certainty equivalent elicited with BDM. A Bayesian interpretation of our results suggests that it is not possible to state ex ante the more appropriate elicitation method for a particular subject: for 1/3 of our sample WTP is preferred, for 1/3 of our sample WTA is preferred, and for the remaining 1/3 BDM is preferred.