Planning Until Death Do Us Part: Partnership Status and Financial Planning Horizon

Positive economic outcomes of marriage are often explained with a higher future orientation of married individuals who are assumed to plan their finances for a longer period than the nonmarried. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (2001–2014; N = 4,819 individuals), the authors provide the first longitudinal test of whether individuals change their financial planning horizons when they change their partnership status using fixed and random effects regressions. Results show that the financial planning horizon increases as individuals enter cohabitation. No further changes in financial planning horizons are found when they transition into marriage. Changes in horizons are similar for women and men. These results indicate that longer financial planning horizons and marriage are likely outcomes of couples' long‐term commitment, which develops during cohabitation. The symbolic and legal institution of marriage is not additionally associated with individual financial planning as a dimension of future orientation.     

Verbot von Leerverkäufen in der Krise

During the recent financial and economic crisis political and corporate representatives demanded for stricter regulations of short sales to limit the risks of price manipulation and potential stock price crashes. In autumn 2008 regulators of most industrial countries decided to implement temporary short sale restrictions to prevent a further collapse of the capital market. While some countries restricted only naked short sales and increased their disclosure requirements, other markets like the USA and Great Britain implemented a full ban on short selling. The analysis of these two markets supports the hypothesis that temporary bans are unlikely to prevent or limit large price drops in the affected stocks. Instead the results suggest that the implemented emergency measures led to a temporary overvaluation of stock prices and to a deterioration of market efficiency. These results become even more prominent for stocks with high dispersion of investor opinion.     

How Journalists Think about Media Effects—And Why We Should Care

Research suggests that journalists’ beliefs about media effects are influenced by unsystematically gathered knowledge and subjective-intuitive judgments. However, it has also been shown that these presumptions must be considered important factors for the formation of journalistic coverage. Against this background, this article synthesizes existing research on dimensions, determinants, and consequences of journalists’ presumptions of media effects. The resulting framework offers researchers in the field of journalistic content production a comprehensive overview of the possible role that presumptions of media effects could play for journalistic content creation. In a second step, we summarize the implications that the current state of research points at. We discuss why journalism scholars should integrate presumed media effects into their research agendas and what communication researchers, as well as journalists themselves, could do to promote more realistic beliefs about media effects among journalists.     

Supervision der Geschäftsführung kleiner freier Träger der Sozialen Arbeit

The economic pressure weighting on social organizations is ever increasing. Leadership coaching supports smaller operating agencies in implementing social management, in integrating an appropriate leadership strategy and in taking measures allowing them to survive in times of scarce resources. The introduction of patterns of economic thinking and action is often perceived as a threat and is considered to be incompatible with the traditional values of social work. Two detailed case studies reflect problems in the coaching practice and ways of a successful restructuring.     

DO CIVIL AND POLITICAL REPRESSION REALLY BOOST FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS?

Multinational enterprises are often accused of having a preference for investing in countries in which the working populations' civil and political rights are largely disregarded. This article presents an empirical investigation of the popular "political repression boosts FDI" hypothesis and arrives at the conclusion that the hypothesis is not supported. On the contrary, multinational enterprises rather appear to be attracted by countries in which civil and political freedom is respected.     

Convergence rates of Gaussian ODE filters

Statistics and Computing - A recently introduced class of probabilistic (uncertainty-aware) solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) applies Gaussian (Kalman) filtering to initial value...     

Does Economic Crisis Always Harm International Migrants? Longitudinal Evidence from Ecuadorians in Barcelona

Current research on the impacts of the 2007 global economic crisis on international migration takes two different positions. Some studies emphasize the negative impacts while others are more positive. This article argues that these two positions offer simplistic interpretations which fail to take account of the complex micro‐level realities that determine migrant experiences. The article discusses how a small group of migrants from Guayaquil, Ecuador, accumulate and consolidate a complex portfolio of assets both before and during the economic crisis in Spain. Conceptualized in terms of an asset accumulation framework, and based on micro‐level longitudinal trend data, rather than the more generally used macro‐level snapshots or anecdotal evidence, the study highlights the fact that the formalization of legal status or citizenship is a crucial pre‐condition, which sets in motion a ‘virtuous’ cycle of consolidation of an interrelated portfolio of assets, regardless of the wider macro‐economic environment. Even if this turns into a ‘vicious’ cycle, for those losing jobs, to date Spanish welfare benefits have acted as a social protection mechanism.     

Bewältigungs- und Aneignungsmuster staatlich geförderter Beschäftigung bei ehemaligen Langzeitarbeitslosen

The article analyses the experiences made in publicly subsidized employment by long-term-unemployed in theoretical and empirical perspectives. The heterogeneity of the investigated population requires a differentiation between various types of personal employment histories as well as the examination of patterns of coping with subsidized employment from a differential perspective: Only a subgroup of the target-group share the notions of normality on which its construction is based. Furthermore, the wage subsidy can fulfill different functions with regard to the recipient’s personal employment history. Finally, problematic employment situations can result in the termination of a subsidized employment relationship. Since heterogeneous groups of persons can be affected by a permanent exclusion from the labour market, it seems problematic to tackle the problems connected with this situation by applying a single labour market measure.     

Rethinking the Foundations of Sustainability Measurement: The Limitations of the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)

The objective of sustainability measurement is to move environmental decision making toward more rigorous, quantitative and empirical foundations. One of the most comprehensive attempts to lay out the foundations for sustainability measurement has been offered by the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). This paper aims to advance the science of sustainability measurement by assessing the validity and reliability of this composite index in order to provide new insights for future indicator development. The architecture of the ESI is validated against the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model, after which an exploratory factor analysis is conducted to reveal the latent structure of the index. Further, the performance of the ESI is tested in cross-national regression models. The results indicate a lack of consistency with the well established PSR model and a potential bias towards economically developed countries grounded in the architecture and weighting mechanism of the index. A re-weighted index (Equivalised ESI) is constructed, resulting in a new ranking of countries’ sustainability. The Equivalised ESI improves the measurement qualities of the index, and in so doing actually reinforces the rich-country bias of the ESI. Put differently, the Equivalised ESI brings the deficiencies of the original ESI to the fore. This paper illustrates that there are serious conceptual problems and validity concerns with defining the ESI as a sustainability measure. Taken together, the findings reinforce the need to reconsider future foundations of sustainability measurement in order to ensure that it is clear both what is being measured and how well.