Promising Practices of Nonprofit Organizations to Respond to the Challenges Faced in Countering the Mistreatment of Older Adults

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article discusses promising practices used by employees and volunteers in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in...     

Structural breaks in panel data: Large number of panels and short length time series

The detection of (structural) breaks or the so called change point problem has drawn increasing attention from the theoretical, applied economic and financial fields. Much of the existing research concentrates on the detection of change points and asymptotic properties of their estimators in panels when N, the number of panels, as well as T, the number of observations in each panel are large. In this paper we pursue a different approach, i.e., we consider the asymptotic properties when N→∞ while keeping T fixed. This situation is typically related to large (firm-level) data containing financial information about an immense number of firms/stocks across a limited number of years/quarters/months. We propose a general approach for testing for break(s) in this setup. In particular, we obtain the asymptotic behavior of test statistics. We also propose a wild bootstrap procedure that could be used to generate the critical values of the test statistics. The theoretical approach is supplemented by numerous simulations and by an empirical illustration. We demonstrate that the testing procedure works well in the framework of the four factors CAPM model. In particular, we estimate the breaks in the monthly returns of US mutual funds during the period January 2006 to February 2010 which covers the subprime crises.     

Revisiting the transitional dynamics of business cycle phases with mixed-frequency data

This paper introduces a Markov-switching model in which transition probabilities depend on higher frequency indicators and their lags through polynomial weighting schemes. The MSV-MIDAS model is estimated through maximum likelihood (ML) methods with a slightly modified version of Hamilton’s filter. Monte Carlo simulations show that ML provides accurate estimates, but they suggest some caution in interpreting the tests of the parameters in the transition probabilities. We apply this new model to forecast business cycle turning points in the United States. We properly detect recessions by exploiting the link between GDP growth and higher frequency variables from financial and energy markets.     

Associations Between Systemic Quality of Life and Burnout Among French Canadian Workers

Social Indicators Research - Burnout has very often been studied from a work-life specific perspective. However, a recent field of research leads to wonder about the impact that life events can...     

Construct Validation and Application of a Common Measure of Social Cohesion in 33 European Countries

The aim of the paper is to assess the construct validation of a multidimensional measure of social cohesion which is well theoretically grounded and has an equivalent/comparable interpretation across all European countries. Up-to-now published research on social cohesion is deficient in either one or both of these important aspects. This paper attempts to cover this gap. The task is accomplished in two steps. In the first step, we conceptualize social cohesion, flowing mainly from Bernard and Chan’s definitions of social cohesion. Based on this theoretical framework we operationalize social cohesion and derive a set of intermediate indicators in the data. By return we verify whether these indicators empirically reflect/corroborate the multidimensional structure of the concept proposed by the theory. In the second step, we examine whether the obtained intermediate indicators of social cohesion form the same constructs across countries and whether they can yield a cross country equivalent measure of social cohesion. To test the validity of the theory we use multidimensional scaling and confirmatory factor analysis. Both models are able to verify the equivalence of the structural results between groups (i.e. countries). Confirmatory factor analysis produces further meaningful measures of these constructs. The analyses are based on the data from the 1999 European Values Study (EVS). The outcomes of the analyses reveal that, firstly, the existence of the multifaceted construct of social cohesion suggested by the theory has been corroborated by empirical analysis of the EVS data (i.e. social cohesion consists of components of formal and substantial relationships and political and socio-cultural domains). Secondly, the proposed constructs measuring social cohesion are equivalent across all analysed countries and thus allow the calculation of internationally comparable national scores of social cohesion. Application of the aggregate measures at the country level will illustrate the interest of the approach for further research.     

Sense of Community and the Perception of the Socio-Physical Environment: A Comparison Between Urban Centers of Different Sizes Across Europe

Measures of subjective well-being, and especially life evaluations, or judgments about how happy people are with their lives as a whole, enrich and empower social indicators research. They do this by requiring other social indicators as explanatory variables and providing a coherent encompassing framework within which the relative importance of other social indicators can be established.     

Iraqi refugees in Jordan: lessons for practice with refugees internationally

Asylum seekers, refugees who are resettled in third countries or those who are forced into refugee camps, present new challenges to social work practitioners. In an attempt to advance theory and develop specialised practice in the area of refugee studies within social work as an international profession, we argue that whatever the flight context, the country of asylum or of resettlement, there is a process underlying what Malkki referred to as refugeeness. This article focuses on the situation of Iraqi refugees in Jordan as an example of the challenges that confront today's refugees. We show that salient issues raised in a local community centre's needs assessment mirror those elements that are central to integration processes that have been discussed in much of the refugee studies literature across the world. We show how these concerns are closely linked to processes that resettled refugees and asylum seekers face, regardless of the country of resettlement. We introduce a framework for analysing an individual refugee's situation and show how an international phenomenon is linked to local practice.     

Performance et relations de conseil: comment la structure relationnelle de l’élite des chercheurs français en cancérologie a conditionné leur progression entre 1999–2001 et 1996–1998

This article shows that performances of a specific subpopulation of French researchers in cancer research depend on their advice network. They make progress if they maximize access to scarce resources and their connection to other groups in certain cases. The absence of status competition within the group of peers is an advantage as well as a sufficient relational opening beyond the group with a majority of “dependent” researchers. By taking into account a shape of “glass ceiling” and a specific case of hematologists, the researchers who have the right structural qualities are 11 times more likely to make progress in terms of performance.