Corporate social responsibility driven innovation

This study identifies the substantial relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and innovation activities of firms. Using the French Vigeo sustainability rating and the Thomson Reuters, we divided 619 firms into groups by their industry sectors, regions, and firm characteristics such as size and age. We premise that innovative investment is needed to prepare tomorrow's profits not only by considering investments in technology and in R&D, but also by dealing with sustainability to human, social, environmental, technical, and economic investments. Consequently, when the firm manipulates its short- and long-run business strategies, the consideration of the correlation between types of investment and CSR initiatives will lead to more cooperating effect on the outcome of investments. The findings provide a comprehensive understanding on the effect of sustainable management strategies on the innovation and sustainability of firms.     

Job quality,industrial relations and the crisis in Europe

This paper reports results from recent Eurofound research on the impact of the crisis on industrial relations and working conditions in Europe, based on the output of Eurofound's European Working Conditions Observatory and European Industrial Relations Observatory and data from the European Working Conditions Survey. Overall, the crisis – even if it is sometimes difficult to separate the effect of the crisis from megatrends in working conditions and industrial relations – seems to have had an impact on both domains. With reference to industrial relations, the impact of the crisis has influenced actors, processes, and outcomes. Regarding working conditions, the results appear to be in line with the literature on the topic, which relates the crisis to an increase in job insecurity, a decrease in work intensity, in working hours, and in anti-social working time arrangements, and a general improvement in terms of health risks and related outcomes.     

Flexible pair-copula estimation in D-vines using bivariate penalized splines

The paper presents a new method for flexible fitting of D-vines. Pair-copulas are estimated semi-parametrically using penalized Bernstein polynomials or constant and linear B-splines, respectively, as spline bases in each knot of the D-vine throughout each level. A penalty induce smoothness of the fit while the high dimensional spline basis guarantees flexibility. To ensure uniform univariate margins of each pair-copula, linear constraints are placed on the spline coefficients and quadratic programming is used to fit the model. The amount of penalizations for each pair-copula is driven by a penalty parameter which is selected in a numerically efficient way. Simulations and practical examples accompany the presentation.     

‘How to be a Happy Homosexual?!’ Non‐monogamy and Governmentality in Relationship Manuals for Gay Men in the 1980s and 1990s

This article explores discourses on non‐monogamy in relationship manuals published in the 1980s and 1990s for gay men from a perspective of governmentality. A distinctive feature of relationship manuals for gay men is the presentation of (non‐) monogamy as a matter of choice and negotiation. However, within this paradigm, most manuals problematise recreational, casual, or non‐relational sex or relationships with multiple partners through a set of discourses around the concepts intimacy, maturity, addiction and compulsion. The normative ideal of a successful gay male partnership is fleshed out in the provision of narrative schemata based on stage model theories which naturalise white middle class relationship experiences and concerns. Governmental rationality thereby enfolds itself in an interplay of several strategies including psychologisation, individualisation, normalisation, problematisation, and responsibilisation.     

Bewertung intertemporaler Abh?ngigkeiten zwischen IT-Projekten

Companies often decide in favour of IT investments (especially IT infrastructure investments) only because these investments build the foundation for more lucrative follow-up investments. Those intertemporal interdependencies among IT projects have to be considered within the scope of a value-based IT portfolio management. Therefore, current literature suggests the use of real options analysis??and therefore the application of option pricing models such as the binomial model or the Black-Scholes model. Both models require a complete market. However, because IT projects are characterized by project specific risks, which cannot be duplicated on a capital market, the forthright application of these models is problematic. This issue has been addressed within the scope of the discrete binomial model so far. In this paper we transfer these findings to the Black-Scholes model. Furthermore, we apply this approach to a real case and illustrate how a correct consideration of project specific risks using the Black-Scholes model can affect investment decisions.     

Tests of serial independence based on Kendall's process

The authors propose new rank statistics for testing the white noise hypothesis in a time series. These statistics are Cramér‐von Mises and Kolmogorov‐Smirnov functionals of an empirical distribution function whose mean is related to a serial version of Kendall's tau through a linear transform. The authors determine the asymptotic behaviour of the underlying serial process and the large‐sample distribution of the proposed statistics under the null hypothesis of white noise. They also present simulation results showing the power of their tests.     

Statistics on statistics: Measuring research productivity by journal publications between 1985 and 1995

Sixteen international journals publishing statistical theory were surveyed over the 11-year period beginning in 1985. Paper, author and adjusted page counts yield cursory measures of productivity for institutions and countries that contributed to fundamental statistical research during that period. These data clearly identify Canada as one of the main contributors to the development of the discipline in the past decade. They also provide valuable information on the evolution of publication habits, in terms of the volume of research, the length of papers, coauthorship practices, etc.