Strategic sustainability and financial performance: exploring abnormal returns

The ongoing empirical debate about whether SRI is associated, if anything, with subpar or surpassing financial performance is characterized by a somewhat indistinct focus and the infeasibility of tapping the full potential of existing models. By indistinct focus, we mean an analysis based on an aggregation of a myriad of SRI factors that potentially affect a firm’s financial performance. The inability of taking full advantage of existing models is reflected by the fact that studies with European data have not been able to comprehensively account for systematic risk tilts. This paper presents a portfolio analysis that overcomes these issues by analyzing a distinct selection of small and innovative firms. We argue that both their strategic implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility and the general growth in socially responsible investments (SRI) lend themselves to an explanation for positive abnormal returns of this portfolio. We account for the idiosyncratic investment style of SRI by introducing a comprehensive pan-European risk-adjusted portfolio analysis based on the Carhart four-factor model. A novel propensity score matching method in conjunction with the estimation of structural models completes the conventional robustness checks in the literature.     

Testing the Vitamin Model of job stress in Dutch health care workers

Three central hypotheses of Warr's Vitamin Model concerning the relationship between job characteristics and well-being and health outcomes were tested: (1) differential effects of job characteristics on the various well-being and health outcomes; (2) predominance of curvilinear associations; and (3) moderate influence of negative and positive affectivity on these relationships. The study participants were 162 employees from a health care organization (aged 19–54 years, 95% women) who completed questionnaires on job demands and job autonomy, as well as on the outcome variables depression, anxiety, job satisfaction, and health complaints. In addition, data on short-term sickness absence were collected. A higher level of job demands was significantly associated with a lower level of well-being and self-reported health. Job autonomy showed weaker relationships with the outcome variables. The effects of job demands were still large after controlling for negative and positive affectivity, while the effects of job autonomy in most cases became non-significant. The predicted curvilinear relationship between job characteristics and outcome variables did not have an additional value over a linear model in predicting the data. It is concluded that the present data from a homogeneous sample of mostly female nurses support Warr's Vitamin Model to a limited extent.     

Current Developments in Social Care Services for Older Adults in the Czech Republic: Trends Towards Deinstitutionalization and Marketization

ABSTRACT

Deinstitutionalization and marketization of eldercare has been delayed by 20 years in the Czech Republic compared to Western Europe, and it takes place in a completely different context, characterized by the legacy of communism, a growing older population, and less generous public subsidies. This study is the first in the Czech Republic to examine how deinstitutionalization and marketization effect implementation of these principles on the availability and quality of eldercare services at regional and municipal levels. A mixed-method approach was used, combining several data sources (policy documents, administrative data, statistics, expert panel, and secondary use of qualitative data). The findings suggest that the support for and availability of home-based care has declined, despite the ever-increasing number of older adults and policy preference for deinstitutionalization. Furthermore, home-based services have failed to adjust to growing care needs of older adults (e.g., inflexible schedules, limited provision of time-demanding care, inadequate staff composition). This situation occasioned an unintended outcome: the emergence of nonregistered, semilegal, for-profit nursing homes offering low-quality care and poor working conditions, and subject to no quality control. The health and even lives of older adults are at risk if they choose such services. Research is needed to study older adult decision making and offer them tools to identify and avoid questionable services.     

The REBMIX Algorithm for the Multivariate Finite Mixture Estimation

The article extends the REBMIX to multivariate data. Random variables may follow normal, lognormal, or Weibull parametric families and should be independent within components. The initial weights and component parameters are not required. Preprocessing of observations folows the histogram, Parzen window, or k-nearest neighbor approach. The number of components, weights, and component parameters are gained iteratively by using information measures of the distance, such as the total of positive relative deviations and the information criterion. The number of classes or the number of the nearest neighbors can be optimized, as well. The REBMIX software is available on http://www.fs.uni-lj.si/lavek.     

New Generalizations of Cauchy Distribution

The generalized skew-normal distribution introduced by Balakrishnan (2002 Balakrishnan , N. ( 2002 ). Discussion on ‘Skew multivariate models related to hidden truncation and/or selective reporting’ by B. C. Arnold and R. J. Beaver . Test 11 : 37 – 39 .[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is used to obtain new generalizations of univariate Cauchy distribution with two parameters, denoted by GC _{m, n} (a, b) with m and n non-negative integer numbers and a, b ∈ R. For cases (m, n) = (1, 2), (m, n) = (2, 1), (m, n) = (0, 3) and (m, n) = (3, 0) explicit forms of the density functions are derived and compared to previous generalizations of Cauchy and skew-Cauchy distributions.     

Computing the distribution of sequential Hölder norms of the Brownian motion

ABSTRACT

In this article, we give explicit formulas and study practical computations for the distribution function of sequential Hölder norms of a Brownian motion and of a Brownian bridge. We also discuss some statistical applications in the detection of some short “epidemic” changes in a sample.     

Indirect Over-Time Relations Between Parenting and Adolescents’ Sexual Behaviors and Emotions Through Global Self-Esteem

The present study examined indirect over-time relations between parenting and adolescent sexuality through global self-esteem. Three waves of online questionnaire data were collected among a community sample of 1,116 Dutch adolescents (M = 13.9 years at baseline). Participants rated the quality of their relationship with parents, their global self-esteem, and their experience with various sexual behaviors. Sexually experienced adolescents (n = 168) evaluated their sexual experiences using six emotions. Path model results showed that a higher-quality relationship with parents at T1 predicted higher levels of self-esteem at T2, which in turn predicted less experience with sexual behaviors and more positive sexual emotions at T3. The indirect over-time path from relationship quality through self-esteem to adolescents’ sexual emotions was significant; the indirect path to adolescents’ experience with sexual behaviors was not significant at the .05 level. No significant age or gender differences were found in the path models. The findings indicate that self-esteem plays an important role in adolescent sexuality and that parents can contribute to positive sexual experiences of adolescents indirectly—through the enhancement of self-esteem—by fostering a high-quality relationship with their children. Implications for theory, future research, and strategies to promote healthy and positive youth sexuality are discussed.     

Predicting online gambling self-exclusion: an analysis of the performance of supervised machine learning models

As gambling operators become increasingly sophisticated in their analysis of individual gambling behaviour, this study evaluates the potential for using machine learning techniques to identify individuals who used self-exclusion tools out of a sample of 845 online gamblers, based on analysing trends in their gambling behaviour. Being able to identify other gamblers whose behaviour is similar to those who decided to use self-exclusion tools could, for instance, be used to share responsible gaming messages or other information that aids self-aware gambling and reduces the risk of adverse outcomes. However, operators need to understand how accurate models can be and which techniques work well. The purpose of the article is to identify the most accurate technique out of four highly diverse techniques and to discuss how to deal analytically and practically with a rare event like self-exclusion, which was used by fewer than 1% of gamblers in our data-set. We conclude that balanced training data-sets are necessary for creating effective models and that, on our data-set, the most effective method is the random forest technique which achieves an accuracy improvement of 35 percentage points versus baseline estimates.     

Gambling among Croatian young people: an exploratory study of the relationship between psychopathic traits,risk-taking tendencies and gambling-related problems

The present study investigated the relationship between psychopathic traits, risk-taking tendencies and gambling problem severity and if these associations varied by gender in a community sample of Croatian adolescents (N = 282; 148 males). Results of the regression analyses showed that the Impulsive-Irresponsible behavioural style (YPI-II) and the Grandiose-Manipulative interpersonal style (YPI-GM) were the strongest postdictors of gambling-related problems. Surprisingly, independently of the YPI-II dimension, the Callous-Unemotional traits were negatively associated to gambling-related problems. By, contrast, independently of the psychopathic traits, risk-tendencies were not significant postdictors of gambling problem severity. With respect to gender differences, higher levels of the YPI-II and YPI-GM dimensions were related to more severe gambling-related problems only in males, not in females. Furthermore, while the CU traits exhibited protective features against gambling-related problems in both genders, the effect was stronger for males than for females.