OIL AND THE MACROECONOMY: A QUANTITATIVE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

We model an open economy where macroeconomic variables fluctuate in response to oil supply shocks, as well as aggregate demand and supply shocks generated domestically and abroad. We use several robust predictions of the model to identify five fundamental shocks underlying the fluctuations of the (real) oil price, the US activity and the global business cycle. The estimates show that supply shocks generated in the global economy explain the largest fraction of the oil price fluctuations, about four times more than canonical oil supply shocks. The correlation between oil prices and the US activity varies with the type of shock.     

Coaching für ?rztinnen in der Facharztausbildung

The article describes a form of group coaching for female physicians during their medical specialty training. The basic approach of the coaching is solution and resource oriented and it comprises five sessions. Participants from different departments are given the opportunity to discuss aspects of their recent working experiences under professional guidance. Participants are therefore able to determine the topics to be discussed by themselves. Interest in the offer of coaching was very high and participants who completed the five sessions rated it very positively. The positive feedback allows us to conclude that as few as five coaching sessions can have a positive impact and can be of support for this target group.     

In vitro fertilization and public policy: turning to the consumer

A responsible and comprehensive policy of in vitro fertilization should be preceded by the gathering of empirical information about the application of the procedure in the 138 IVF centers across the country. To date, attention has been directed more to the implications of IVF as a whole than to actual behaviors in the medical community. It is appropriate to survey patients and physicians, examine consent forms, and study guidelines issued by the medical community in order to enhance public knowledge of what has been done voluntarily in the medical community and what remains to be done. Moreover, consumers should be encouraged to speak about their experiences and other groups encouraged to act as advocates for affirmative IVF policy. At present, the interest group spectrum is skewed by physicians' interests groups (speaking for IVF) and other interest groups criticizing the technique. Organized advocates for affirmative IVF policy are less well represented.     

Bounded Memory and Biases in Information Processing

Before choosing among two actions with state‐dependent payoffs, a Bayesian decision‐maker with a finite memory sees a sequence of informative signals, ending each period with fixed chance. He summarizes information observed with a finite‐state automaton. I characterize the optimal protocol as an equilibrium of a dynamic game of imperfect recall; a new player runs each memory state each period. Players act as if maximizing expected payoffs in a common finite action decision problem. I characterize equilibrium play with many multinomial signals. The optimal protocol rationalizes many behavioral phenomena, like “stickiness,” salience, confirmation bias, and belief polarization.     

Use of propensity score matching to evaluate a national smoking cessation media campaign

Sustained mass media campaigns have been recommended to stem the tobacco epidemic in the United States. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to estimate the effect of awareness of a national smoking cessation media campaign (EX) on quit attempts and cessation-related cognition. Participants were 4,067 smokers and recent quitters aged 18-49 in targeted U.S. media markets. Controlling for potential confounders through PSM and regression analysis, confirmed awareness of EX was not significantly associated with either outcome at 6-month follow-up. Matched analyses excluding 217 quitters resulted in a significant effect of EX on both outcomes.     

Friendship and Alcohol Use in Early Adolescence: A Multilevel Social Network Approach

This study applies multilevel social network analytic techniques to examine processes of homophilic selection and social influence related to alcohol use among friends in early adolescence. Participants included 3,041 Dutch youth (M age =12 years, 49% female) from 120 classrooms in 14 schools. Three waves with 3‐month intervals of friendship nomination data and self‐reports of drinking behavior were collected. Results revealed that within classrooms, friendship nominations tended to be reciprocated and dyadic friendships tended to be embedded within cohesive subgroups (e.g., cliques). Students tended to nominate friends who were the same sex, from a similar ethnic background, and who they previously knew from primary school. Selection processes turned out to play a more significant role than social influence processes in predicting similarity between early adolescent friends' alcohol use. Although friendship dynamics and individual drinking trajectories substantially differed between classrooms, the effects of homophilic selection and social influence did not.     

Kinging in Hungarian lesbian culture

This article looks at the position of the drag king in Hungarian lesbian culture. It focuses on Bandage, Socks and Facial Hair (2006), a documentary about a drag king workshop. The film documents the historical moment when the Hungarian workshop participants encounter the drag king as a lesbian tool for parodying and repoliticizing mainstream masculinity. I examine the ways in which the participants interpret their performances of masculinity and the film negotiates heteronormativity. I argue that the political merits of the film can be spelled out by reading the participants' (trans)gender politics from the perspective of the cultural specificities of post-socialist Hungary.     

The Paradoxical Effects of COVID‐19 in Italian Systemic Practice: Clinical and Teaching ‘Insights’

The COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted the personal and professional lives of all of us and has laid the bases for a social and cultural change. This article is written as a reflection on the paradoxical effects of the ‘viral phenomenon.’ We wish to highlight the opportunities and changes that have arisen from the emergency situation, especially through the use of the online setting, both in the clinical work and training activities of systemic therapists. This article is not intended to be a panegyric on the merits of digital sessions, but an appraisal, also through clinical examples, of the contributions that technology may give to our practices. We do not consider technology as a substitute, but as an integration and enrichment of the therapist's and trainer's tools. This tough experience may be transformed into an opportunity for learning new techniques and practices in which the screen becomes a useful support.     

Economic decline and voter discontent

Standard economic voting research is too narrowly focused on how economic changes affect the popularity of the governing incumbents, especially with respect to the mainstream opposition party. This approach cannot easily interpret voting behavior as an expression of system wide support. The article seeks to fill this void by using the case of Canada to analyze how long-term economic decline affects election behavior. In particular, the relative success of non-mainstream parties in recent Canadian elections is shown to be connected, at least in part, to long-term economic decline. This is particularly true of those who have borne the brunt of the economic restructuring that has taken place since the 1970s, namely, working-class individuals who lack post-secondary education. Although economic conditions of this group have always been precarious, it has suffered greater economic decline compared to others. This widening gap has led to more negative attitudes towards the political system, which in turn has increasingly led voters from this group to abandon Canada's two mainstream parties, the Liberal and Progressive Conservative, in favor of non-mainstream parties. Analysis is based on a pooled dataset that integrates economic and election survey data from the 1970s to the 1990s.