Relative labour deprivation and urban migration in Turkey

The paper develops a concept, a measure and an index of relative labour deprivation and applies these tools to measure deprivation in urban areas of South-East Turkey. It is shown how a Yitzhaki-type of relative deprivation index can be applied to the labor domain and be extended to take into account the notion of reference group derived from modern theories of social justice. In the absence of panel or longitudinal data, such measure results particularly useful to derive policy recommendations for areas characterized by heterogeneous communities. Contrary to what conventional statistics and wisdom would suggest, we find migrants from Eastern Turkey to be less relatively labour deprived than other groups of migrants.     

An SEIR Model with Time-Varying Coefficients for Analyzing the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic

In this study, we propose a time-dependent susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model for the analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic outbreak in three different countries, the United States, Italy, and Iceland using public data inherent the numbers of the epidemic wave. Since several types and grades of actions were adopted by the governments, including travel restrictions, social distancing, or limitation of movement, we want to investigate how these measures can affect the epidemic curve of the infectious population. The parameters of interest for the SEIR model were estimated employing a composite likelihood approach. Moreover, standard errors have been corrected for temporal dependence. The adoption of restrictive measures results in flatten epidemic curves, and the future evolution indicated a decrease in the number of cases.     

Surviving in Psychiatry as a Systemic Therapist

Although family therapy was born to deal with problems posed by severe mental disorders, systemic therapists today tend to drift away from the field of psychiatry The author refers to his own experience in psychiatry to argue in favour of the presence of the systemic model within the field: systemic understanding might be precious to counterbalance the tendency toward too easy a reliance on bio‐psychiatry and pharmacology. In turn, keeping close to psychiatry and to its problems can be useful to systemic therapists, by involving them in social and epistemological queries that are otherwise extraneous to professionals mainly devoted to private practice.     

Can Europe Reach Full Employment Again?

ABSTRACT: In this paper the author analyzes what has caused the marked increase in unemployment registered throughout the major industrialized countries over the past fifteen years. In particular, the relation between wages and employment is examined, along the lines of a Ricardian analysis. In recent times various rigidity factors in the labour market have rendered the absorption and reabsorption of unemployment more arduous. From this analytical basis, the author discusses the concept of the optimum degree of flexibility and outlines the measures to be taken if unemployment is to be beaten.     

Detecting bliss synergy in in vivo combination studies with a tumor kinetic model

Linear models are generally reliable methods for analyzing tumor growth in vivo, with drug effectiveness being represented by the steepness of the regression slope. With immunotherapy, however, not all tumor growth follows a linear pattern, even after log transformation. Tumor kinetics models are mechanistic models that describe tumor proliferation and tumor killing macroscopically, through a set of differential equations. In drug combination studies, although an additional drug‐drug interaction term can be added to such models, however, the drug interactions suggested by tumor kinetics models cannot be translated directly into synergistic effects. We have developed a novel statistical approach that simultaneously models tumor growth in control, monotherapy, and combination therapy groups. This approach makes it possible to test for synergistic effects directly and to compare such effects among different studies.     

Being NEET in Europe Before and After the Economic Crisis: An Analysis of the Micro and Macro Determinants

The right to adequate minimum income protection is one of the key principles included in the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The EPSR takes a right-based and normative approach, aiming specifically at fulfilling people’s essential needs, not only by guaranteeing sufficiently high income levels, but also by promoting labour market inclusion and access to affordable goods and services of good quality. This paper takes the EPSR as a starting point to propose a needs-based indicator that assesses the adequacy of minimum income protection including these three dimensions in a comprehensive way. We argue that Reference Budgets (RBs), priced baskets of goods and services that represent an adequate living standard, are well-suited to construct such an indicator. To illustrate this empirically, we use RBs for adequate social participation in Belgium which have been constructed for the first time in 2008 and have been regularly updated since then. Through a combination of hypothetical household simulations of essential out-of-pocket costs and designated tax-benefits for families living on different minimum income schemes, we are able to assess the adequacy of minimum income protection for a range of household types over the period 2008–2017. The paper shows that, the proposed indicator is a useful policy tool for both ex-ante and ex-post evaluations of the adequacy of social policy measures in light of the social protection and inclusion rights included in the Pillar.

     

The Influence of Minority Stress,Gender, and Legalization of Civil Unions on Parenting Desire and Intention in Lesbian Women and Gay Men: Implications for Social Policy and Clinical Practice

Although the rate of lesbian and gay (LG) parents is increasing, lesbian and gay adults are less likely than heterosexual adults to be parents, as desire and intention to become a parent tend to be lower. This study aims at assessing 290 childless LG individuals (120 lesbian women and 170 gay men) to explore the influence of minority stress, gender differences, and legalization of civil unions in Italy on parenting desire and intention. The results indicated that the minority stressors associated with parenting dimensions included prejudice events, outness, and internalized homophobia for lesbian women, but only felt stigma among gay men. Support from family or significant others buffered the effects of minority stressors on parenting dimensions. Thus, the minority stress processes partly explain the intention and desire to become parents in LG childless individuals. Furthermore, lesbian women showed higher levels of parenting desire and intention than gay men and the levels of these parenting dimensions increased after the law on civil unions was enacted. The findings have important implications for both social policies and clinical practice.     

TOPICS AND GEOGRAPHICAL DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE IN TOP ECONOMIC JOURNALS

We study the evolution of topics in economics and their geographical specialization by analyzing 13,233 papers from seven top journals between 1985 and 2012 and their forward citations. The share of U.S. publications declines from 75% to 64% with a corresponding increase of the European share from 12% to 24%. We use topic modeling and document the evolution of the discipline over 27 years. We estimate, with a quasi‐structural model, the citation lag distribution for 18 different topics and three large geographical areas. The modal citation lag is about 6.7 years in the entire sample and 4.8 years for citations from the top 100 journals. We quantify (1) the home bias effect in citations, (2) how it fades away over time, (3) the long lasting impact of U.S. publications vis‐à‐vis other geographical areas, and (4) the higher speed of diffusion and faster obsolescence in the United States. (JEL A14, I23, O33, A11)     

Relational Ownership and CEO Continuity: A Property Rights Perspective

Inspired by agency theory, research on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) succession often focuses on turnovers as a mechanism to discipline CEOs in the event of poor firm performance. Recent research extends this view by showing that CEO turnovers can also lead to substantial disruption in a firm's management. Less is known, however, about the antecedents of disruption and continuity in the context of CEO turnovers. Drawing on modern property rights theory, we investigate how CEO continuity varies across different types of firms. Using a sample of Swiss publicly traded firms, we find that relational ownership enhances the likelihood of CEOs staying in office or moving to the position of board chair. Firms with little relational ownership, in contrast, display a high degree of CEO continuity only when capital intensity is high. Provided that a CEO turnover occurs, relational ownership and capital intensity reduce the likelihood of interim CEO successions. These findings highlight the importance of a nuanced view of CEO continuity, taking into account owner types as well as contextual factors.     

From the multi-sited to the in-between: ethnography as a way of delving into migrants’ transnational relationships

Multi-sited ethnography has been extensively applied to migrants’ transnational family life and to the underlying care practices. Its methodological underpinnings and dilemmas, though, are relatively under-reflected. How can the relational and affective spaces between migrants and left-behind kin be ethnographically appreciated? Against this question, I revisit my fieldwork on a migration flow between Ecuador and Italy. This is an instance of the development of transnational social relationships, based on the circulation of material, cognitive and emotional resources, whereby people living ‘here’ and ‘there’ negotiate mutual affections, concerns and expectations. The challenge for ethnographers, under similar circumstances, lies less in staying in more sites than in sensing and understanding the relationships between them and the social practices on which this connectedness relies. The attendant methodological implications are discussed, ultimately pointing to the significance of relationality and in-betweenness for ethnographies of migration, transnationalism and mobilities.