Emerging organizational forms: Work and organization in the 21st century

This article begins with the premise that there is continuous and accelerating change in the Western World in the nature of work and how it is organized. An important contributory force is information technology — itself changing rapidly.When the dynamics of the external environment of organizations are added to changes in IT, we will see new forms of organizations evolving in the business world, such as the ‘starburst’ and ‘internal market’ structures.Michael Scott Morton supplies a diagram to illustrate the framework of research which the ‘1990s’ program at MIT is following — how to balance the dynamic tension between external forces and the internal dimensions of organizations to reward shareholders adequately. He refers to one of Peter Senge's ideas in The Fifth Dimension which is central in creating an organization which learns how to innovate constantly: System Thinking — the search for systemic patterns. It reinforces Scott Morton's argument, and seems a particularly appropriate discipline in a continuously turbulent business environment.     

Betting the future online

The Internet has brought, among other things, the online betting exchange. From desks in the City or from laptops on sunny beaches, those in the know or out of it can place bets with each other on anything under the sun, whether likely—Australia beating England at cricket—or the reverse. If you have a hunch that a genetically engineered Tyrannosaur will wander down Oxford Street next year, and if you want to put money on it, Internet betting exchanges will find someone to accommodate you. Leighton Vaughan Williams explains how a simple change in tax regime has brought something other than just a more efficient gambling system. It has created a strangely accurate way of foretelling the future.     

Global and local statistical properties of fixed-length nonparametric smoothers

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the global and local statistical properties of nonparametric smoothers subject to a priori fixed length restriction. In order to do so, we introduce a set of local statistical measures based on their weighting system shapes and weight values. In this way, the local statistical measures of bias, variance and mean square error are intrinsic to the smoothers and independent of the data to which they will be applied on. One major advantage of the statistical measures relative to the classical spectral ones is their easiness of calculation. However, in this paper we use both in a complementary manner. The smoothers studied are based on two broad classes of weighting generating functions, local polynomials and probability distributions. We consider within the first class, the locally weighted regression smoother (loess) of degree 1 and 2 (L1 and L2), the cubic smoothing spline (CSS), and the Henderson smoothing linear filter (H); and in the second class, the Gaussian kernel (GK). The weighting systems of these estimators depend on a smoothing parameter that traditionally, is estimated by means of data dependent optimization criteria. However, by imposing to all of them the condition of an equal number of weights, it will be shown that some of their optimal statistical properties are no longer valid. Without any loss of generality, the analysis is carried out for 13- and 9-term lengths because these are the most often selected for the Henderson filters in the context of monthly time series decomposition. We would like to thank an Associate Editor and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Financing from MURST is also gratefully acknowledged.     

A non-linear time series approach to modelling asymmetry in stock market indexes

In this paper we analyse the performances of a novel approach to modelling non-linear conditionally heteroscedastic time series characterised by asymmetries in both the conditional mean and variance. This is based on the combination of a TAR model for the conditional mean with a Constrained Changing Parameters Volatility (CPV-C) model for the conditional variance. Empirical results are given for the daily returns of the S&P 500, NASDAQ composite and FTSE 100 stock market indexes.     

The “Green” and “Gold” Roads to Open Access: The Case for Mixing and Matching

Recent discussions on Open Access (OA) have tended to treat OA journals and self-archiving as two distinct routes. Some supporters of self-archiving even suggest that it alone can bring about full Open Access to the world's scientific literature. In this paper, it is argued that each route actually corresponds to a phase in the movement toward Open Access; that the mere fact of self-archiving is not enough; that providing some branding ability to the repositories is needed. However, doing so will eventually bring about the creation of overlay (or database) journals. The two roads, therefore, will merge to create a mature OA landscape.     

Do poor people have a stronger relationship between income and mortality than the rich? Implications of panel data for health-health analysis

Articles developing health-health analysis have used the observation that richer people tend to face reduced mortality risk to estimate the break-even cost per life saved of health regulations. If government requires that the private sector spend more than this break-even cutoff, the risk of dying due to reduced health investment is increased by more than it will be reduced by the direct action of the health regulation. We use panel data to suggest that the relationship between income and the probability of death is greater for poor people than for the rich. As a consequence, break-even cutoffs are roughly twice as large for the richest 20% of the population than they are for the poorest 20%. The nonlinearity in the income-to-mortality linkage also implies that income transfers between income groups which are ignored in traditional cost-benefit analysis will affect the conclusions of health-health analysis significantly.     

新世纪以来国内新闻评论研究的回顾与展望

新世纪以来,新闻评论研究的成果数量呈剧增态势,研究领域进一步扩大,研究内容主要集中在新媒体评论以及转型期新闻评论之变化,研究方法渐趋多元化。这些变化与社会转型期舆论多元化、新媒体评论与传统媒体评论间的互动以及其它学科对新闻学研究的影响等几个方面有关。针对当前新闻评论总体研究水平不高,系统性、理论性不强,研究方法以思辨研究为主等问题,学界应在今后研究过程中注重微观与宏观、理论与实践、定性与定量等方面的结合。