Global loss of production capacity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

The global economy faces a loss of production capacity among the most severe in at least the past half-century as a result of the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It will take several years of persistent investment efforts to restore the pre-pandemic level of capacity and put global output back to potential. By using a production function based on the incremental capital-output ratio, we estimate the loss of production capacity for the global economy and for the two main world locomotives, the U.S. and China. To do this, we estimate the production capacity implied in our current recession baseline and the capacity that would have existed in the absence of the pandemic (precrisis scenario). The difference between the two estimates is defined as the loss of capacity generated by the pandemic. The results also allow us to extract some policy implications in terms of mitigation measures and investment requirements.     

Les différences de salaire au sein de l'Union européenne

Les auteurs recherchent les déterminants des écarts salariaux au sein de l'Union européenne selon la position dans la distribution des salaires, suivant en cela la méthode proposée par Firpo, Fortin et Lemieux (2009) et par Fortin, Lemieux et Firpo (2011). Ils expliquent ces écarts à la fois par un effet de composition et par un effet de structure. Ce dernier effet, plus puissant, dépend surtout des facteurs non observés, alors que l'effet de composition peut ětre attribué principalement au niveau de diplôme, à la profession, à la fréquence des fonctions d'encadrement et, dans une moindre mesure, au secteur d'activité.     

The state of crisis communication research and education through the lens of crisis scholars: An international Delphi study

This Delphi study explores the status of crisis communication research and education qualitatively through the lens of 22 internationally recognized crisis communication scholars, systematically recruited and retained to serve on the crisis expert Delphi panel in a two-year span. Taking a multi-iteration consensus-building approach, this study enabled the expert panel to individually elaborate and collectively evaluate shared observations and insights regarding trends, patterns, and nuances in crisis communication as a unique interdisciplinary area of research and practice. The quality and impact of current scholarship, methodological rigor and diversity, and perceived knowledge gaps between academia and industry were compared and synthesized across countries. Consensus was achieved in the majority of the proposed questions. Results show challenges and particular deficiencies within the crisis communication research domain. The main challenge is bridging the gap between academia and industry. The lack of theory development and cross-cultural studies contribute to part of this challenge. The knowledge and perceptual gaps identified by our Delphi expert panel also suggest a need to align crisis communication academic research more closely with crisis communication teaching. Despite the increasingly broadened presence of crisis communication scholarship, it remains small and stunted at some universities. The discussions and insights that emerged in this Delphi study help pave the way for further research innovation and educational program development in crisis communication.     

Family contact in foster care in Portugal. The views of children in foster care and other key actors

This is a pilot study on the sensitive issue of how children and young people experience family contact in foster care, and the views of key adults in their lives on the same issue. There is a special focus on the children's experiences, opinions, and feelings. The study is a response to the relative scarcity of literature on family contact based on the experiences of children and adults in caring roles. This is a qualitative and exploratory study, with a sample of 10 children and young people in care in the district of Porto, aiming to identify key issues and areas for further examination. The results allow us to conclude that the possibility of maintaining contact is positively evaluated. However, perspectives on the relationships involved, and on the reactions to and difficulties associated with visits, revealed considerable disagreement among the actors. A possible set of implications drawn from the findings pointed out to the importance of developing a monitored cooperation that improves communication processes in order to take into account the children's and young people's views in the decision‐making process; and to develop more attentive and open working relationships with parents throughout the foster care placement.     

A weakly informative prior for Bayesian dynamic model selection with applications in fMRI

In recent years, Bayesian statistics methods in neuroscience have been showing important advances. In particular, detection of brain signals for studying the complexity of the brain is an active area of research. Functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) is an important tool to determine which parts of the brain are activated by different types of physical behavior. According to recent results, there is evidence that the values of the connectivity brain signal parameters are close to zero and due to the nature of time series fMRI data with high-frequency behavior, Bayesian dynamic models for identifying sparsity are indeed far-reaching. We propose a multivariate Bayesian dynamic approach for model selection and shrinkage estimation of the connectivity parameters. We describe the coupling or lead-lag between any pair of regions by using mixture priors for the connectivity parameters and propose a new weakly informative default prior for the state variances. This framework produces one-step-ahead proper posterior predictive results and induces shrinkage and robustness suitable for fMRI data in the presence of sparsity. To explore the performance of the proposed methodology, we present simulation studies and an application to functional magnetic resonance imaging data.     

Measure of internalized sexual stigma for lesbians and gay men: a new scale

The goal of this study is to propose a new Measure of Internalized Sexual Stigma for Lesbians and Gay Men (MISS-LG) that assesses three dimensions of internalized homonegativity: identity, social discomfort, and sexuality. A convenience sample of 735 Italian lesbians and gay male participants was used to demonstrate the psychometric validity of the scale. Results of confirmatory factor analysis supported three identifiable factors reflecting theoretically based constructs of the MISS-LG. The correlations with other instruments demonstrate the convergent validity: lesbian and gay participants with high internalized sexual stigma describe lower levels of self-disclosure and wellbeing. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Living Alone over the Life Course: Cross-National Variations on an Emerging Issue

The increasing proportion of persons living alone has come to be emblematic in many ways of modern Western societies because it represents the importance conceded to the individual and to individual goals at the expense, basically, of the family. Solo living has been interpreted within the context of changing values and preferences, changing personal and conjugal realities, and the changing work contexts so often associated with the Second Demographic Transition. We know little about patterns and trends in living alone over the life course in much of the world because most research to date has concentrated on regional and national portrayals or on living arrangements in later life. This study provides a systematic look at the differences in living alone by age and sex in 113 countries. Our aim is to understand the extent to which behavior differs around the world and the implications this has for society. We also examine the relationship between trends in living alone and levels of human development. Results are taken from three massive datasets: census and survey microdata from IPUMS-international, Demographic Health Surveys, and EU-Labor Force Surveys.