Relations of School Children's Comforting Behavior to Empathy-Related Reactions and Shyness

The purpose of this study was to examine empathy-related and personal correlates of children's comforting reactions. Quantity and quality of third to sixth graders' comforting of a crying infant were assessed and their relations with situational and dispositional empathy-related responding, shyness, and vagal tone were examined. Quantity and quality of boys' comforting were related to reports of sympathetic/empathic responding to an empathy-inducing film, whereas quantity of girls' comforting was associated with low facial and heart rate markers of vicarious distress in another context. Quality of comforting was associated with markers of girls' vicarious distress. Comforting was negatively related to younger children's shyness and marginally, positive correlated with girls' vagal tone. Suppression of vagal tone was associated with quantity of comforting.     

Area-based partnerships in rural Poland: The post-accession experience

The paper examines the characteristics of area-based partnerships in rural Poland. It is based on the study of partnerships created after the accession to the European Union in 2004. Partnership structures have been rapidly adopted in rural Poland due to opportunities provided by the LEADER+ Pilot Programme. However, the research showed that partnerships are frequently subject to elite domination by local authorities and hence fail to fully engage a range of community and private sector actors. Funding rules for LEADER, most notably the condition that money will only be paid on the completion of projects, has been particularly significant in perpetuating the domination of partnerships by organisations with existing access to financial and human capital. Hence funding arrangements can undermine the ability of Polish partnerships to operate in ways which harness the endogenous capacities of local communities. To date power differentials between notional ‘partners’ have been experienced to a greater extent than in advanced liberal democracies. The research found that overt domination of partnership structures by state agencies limited the possibilities for community led development initiative in rural Poland.     

Warum es kaum Pensionsfonds in Deutschland gibt. Kapitalmarktrisiken,Finanzindustrie und die Politik der Mindestverzinsung

Studies of the rise of private defined-contribution pension plans have traditionally focused on social policy concerns about the allocation of risks and costs for beneficiaries and employers. There is however another dimension of pension privatization, which situates it in the context of financial markets and—more broadly—the economic system. Here, regulations forcing private pension providers to guarantee a minimum rate of return on individuals’ pension assets make a crucial difference for financial markets because they incentivize fund managers to invest a greater chunk of plan portfolios in fixed-income securities and therefore away from equities. While different segments of the financial industry have divergent preferences over minimum return guarantees, politicians are caught in a dilemma: Should they prioritize predictable benefit levels or the development of equity markets? Using the case of the introduction of the German Riester Rente, we argue that, as politicians linked the introduction of private defined-contribution plans with cuts in statutory pensions, insurance firms in coalition with trade unions insisted on minimum guarantees, thereby restricting the expansion of equity markets in Germany.     

Economic Resourcefulness: Definition and Modeling

Social Indicators Research - The amount of income earned, wealth and position in the labor market are determined by many factors. Numerous analyses indicate that these characteristics depend on,...     

Internal Migration and Development: Comparing Migration Intensities Around the World

Migration is the principal demographic process shaping patterns of human settlement, and it serves an essential role in human development. While progress has been made in measuring international migration, internal migration statistics are as yet poorly developed in many countries. This article draws on a repository of data established under the IMAGE (Internal Migration Around the GlobE) project to address this deficit by constructing the first comprehensive league table of internal migration intensities for countries around the world. We review previous work, outline the major impediments to making reliable comparisons, and set out a methodology that combines a novel estimation procedure with a flexible spatial aggregation facility. We present the results in the form of league tables of aggregate crude migration intensities that capture all changes of address over one‐year or five‐year intervals for 96 countries, representing four‐fifths of the global population. Explanation for the observed differences has been sought, inter alia, in historical, structural, cultural, and economic forces. We examine the links between development and migration intensity through simple correlations using a range of demographic, economic, and social variables. Results reveal clear associations between internal migration intensities and selected indicators of national development.     

New Approximation Algorithms for the Steiner Tree Problems

The Steiner tree problem asks for the shortest tree connecting a given set of terminal points in a metric space. We design new approximation algorithms for the Steiner tree problems using a novel technique of choosing Steiner points in dependence on the possible deviation from the optimal solutions. We achieve the best up to now approximation ratios of 1.644 in arbitrary metric and 1.267 in rectilinear plane, respectively.