On fairness of equilibria in economies with differential information

The paper proposes a notion of fairness which overcomes the conflict arising between efficiency and the absence of envy in economies with uncertainty and asymmetrically informed agents. We do it in general economies which include, as particular cases, the main models of differential information economies, providing in this framework a natural competitive equilibrium notion which satisfies the fair criterion. The analysis is conducted allowing the presence of large traders, which may cause the lack of perfect competition.     

Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life

We adapt a metaphor from life course studies to designate the whole of one's possessions, across time, as a convoy of material support. This dynamic collection of things supports daily life and the self, but it can also present difficulty in later life. To alleviate the purported burdens of the material convoy, a discourse has arisen that urges elders and their family members to reduce the volume of possessions. An analysis of 11 such possession management texts shows authors addressing two distinct audiences about elders' need to downsize: family members and elders themselves. Authors who speak to family members do so with an urgent, unsentimental tone that echoes mainstream clutter-control advice about disorderly, overfull households. In texts for elders, the standard critique about consumption and unruly lives is gentler, more sensitive to the meaning of things, and underplays the emotions of divestment. There is stress on the responsibility to spare the next generation and control one's legacy. These latter texts seem to respect that downsizing in later life symbolizes a narrowing of the life world.     

BASIC FAMILY THERAPY SKILLS, IV: TRANSGENERATIONAL THEORIES OF FAMILY THERAPY

This pape focuses on the basic skills and compentencies of transgenerational approaches to family therapy, the fourth report of a program of research surveys by the Basic Family Therapy Skills Project. In the first survey, a panel of family therapy educators listed the most critical or basic skills or compentencies of beginning family therapist with a transgenerational orientation. In the third survey, self-selected respondents rated these items according to degree of importance for beginning family therapists. Rankings of the items according to mean scores of the Likert responses indicate that transgenerational family therapy skills are founded in theory and can be identified behaviorally. The most important skills are those that use the self of the therapist to understand and utilize transgenerational family therapy skills for both therapist and client. Also listed are skills that many raters deemed "generic" rather than specifically related to transgenerational family therapy. Other findings and their implications for the future training of family therapists are discusses. Although the paper is intended for family therapy educators interested in their colleagues' ideas about critical skills in trans-generational family therapy, theorists and clinicians may also find it useful.     

The human component of sustainability: a study for assessing "human performances" of energy efficient construction blocks

This paper presents an applied research aimed at understanding the relevance and the applicability of human related criteria in sustainability assessment of construction materials. Under a theoretical perspective, human factors consideration is strongly encouraged by building sustainability assessment methods, but the practice demonstrates that current models for building sustainability assessment neglect ergonomic issues, especially those ones concerning the construction phase. The study starts from the observation that new construction techniques for high energy efficient external walls are characterized by elements generally heavier and bigger than traditional materials. In this case, high sustainability performances connected with energy saving could be reached only consuming high, and then not very much sustainable, human efforts during setting-up operations. The paper illustrates a practical approach for encompassing human factors in sustainability assessment of four block types for energy efficient external walls. Research steps, from block selections to bricklaying task analysis, human factors indicators and metrics formulation, data gathering and final assessment are going to be presented. Finally, open issues and further possible generalizations from the particular case study will be discussed.     

Confessional identity and models of aristocratic conversion in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hungary

This article explores the intricate relationship between representations and social practices in the context of aristocratic conversion, non-conversion and marriage. The autobiography of a Calvinist magnate woman, who lived in a mixed marriage and resisted conversion, is discussed and interpreted as a non-conversion narrative. It is compared to other extant documentation (both ego-documents and third-person narratives) regarding the conversion to Catholicism of four aristocratic men, whose political and social positions were enhanced as a result of conversion. The construction of Habsburg rule and its concomitant pressure for Catholicism provides the common political context of both eighteenth-century Transylvania and seventeenth-century Habsburg Hungary, where these stories take place. Offering a further comparative perspective, the study aims to highlight the similarities and differences between Hungarian and European accounts. It also pinpoints the underlying similarities within the conversion models of rival confessions (Catholic and Protestant) and brings to the fore the social practices that entailed the crossing of confessional boundaries. Its most surprising finding is that in the propagandistic climate of the confessional age even the autobiographical narrative was turned into a tool of propaganda against mixed marriages. Amid this confessional rivalry, not only were the appeal of female agency and the story of conversion for love and marriage lost but, in Habsburg Hungary, politics was also excluded from conversion models due to the ambivalent relationship of the elite to the foreign king. Similarly to patterns identified in other regions of Europe, martyrdom played a significant role in both Protestant and Catholic conversion models.     

Balls Enough: Manliness and Legitimated Violence in Hell's Kitchen

This article presents one example of how masculinity and hierarchy are exercised through violence in organizations. It draws on the empirical data of 15 episodes from the US reality television series Hell's Kitchen, in which 15 cooks compete for the job of Chef in one of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's restaurants. Ramsay's task is to lead the cooks towards a hegemonic masculinity valid in the restaurant context. An important feature is the contestant's ability to deal with Ramsay's fiery temper and fits of rage. The winner is the person who succeeds in approaching Ramsay's standards in terms of culinary art and leadership qualities, which in his terminology is referred to as manliness. Ramsay's aggressive style of management is possible to recognize, explain and to a certain extent justify as a way of running a restaurant. But what if his tongue‐lashings are to be understood, not as a possible way to train skilled chefs, but instead are called violence? Gender‐oriented organizational studies stress the importance of paying attention to acts of violence in organizations rather than disregarding it as organizational culture or tradition. Using concepts and perspectives from masculinity theory and feminist studies on men's violence against women, the purpose of this article is to analyse the micro practices of how masculinity and hierarchy are exercised through violence in the restaurant environment. As will be argued, reality television can be understood, not so much as a reflection but rather as an exaggeration of real life. It can be seen as a distorting mirror that enlarges and at the same time perverts the micro practices of reality. The aim is dual; to investigate the link between masculinity and legitimated violence in organizations and to give prominence to the potential of reality television visualizing the normalization of violence in organizations.     

Block unimodality for multivariate Bayesian robustness

Summary The development of Bayesian robustness has been growing in the last decade. The theory has extensively dealt with the univariate parameter case. Among the vast amount of proposals in the literature, only a few of them have a straightforward extension to the multivariate case. In this paper we consider the multidimensional version of the class of ε-contaminated prior distributions, with unimodal contaminations. In the multivariate case there is not a unique definition of unimodality and one's choice must be based on statistical ground. Here we propose the use of the block unimodal distributions, which proved to be very suitable for modelling situations where the coordinates of the parameter ϑ are deemed, a priori, weakly correlated.