Quantifying fear: The social impact of terrorism

This paper proposes a methodology to measure social impact of terrorism. We define a multidimensional terrorism index based not only on deaths but also on other variables such as injuries, bombs and kidnappings. The weight of each terrorist activity is given by its social impact, which is estimated through its relevance in the media. For this task we build up a new data set from the four most important newspapers in Spain, namely, El País, El Mundo, ABC, and La Vanguardia. Finally, we evaluate the social impact of ETA terrorism in Spain from 1993 through 2004.     

How Good Are Networks for Migrant Job Seekers? Ethnographic Evidence from North Carolina Farm Labor* Camps

Migrant farmworker networks are vital components in their job seeking and underemployment minimization strategies. Yet, farmworker cultural, physical, and institutional isolation along with the itinerant and clandestine features of farmwork have become major obstacles in the development of robust lateral communitywide network ties that would otherwise favor reciprocity and resource sharing. Thus, contrary to the positive social capital assumption, we argue that the paucity and fragmented features of farmworkers’ lateral ties have increased their vulnerability and locked them in exploitative relationships in a hostile social environment that makes impractical or impossible the formation of alternative ties. Our study is based on participant observation through a 6‐week stay in three North Carolina farm labor camps. On‐site evidence shows that the two larger groups of solitary male farmworkers and farmworking families break up into smaller groups, each group in pursuit of its own short‐term goals. We conclude that, even though farmworker networks help them to find and ensure temporary jobs, their inability to use the networks to share resources is ultimately detrimental for participants’ long‐term socioeconomic prospects.     

Metabolic and hormonal responses to different resistance training systems in elderly men

Objective: To compare acute and sub-acute responses in hormonal profile and metabolic parameters in elderly people who participated in two methods of strength training (ST) with equalized loads.

Methods and materials: A total of 12 elder individuals (65?±?3 years) were randomly assigned to two training methods: constant intensity (CI, 3 sets of 10 repetitions with 75% of 1RM) and variable intensity (VI, 1st set: 12 repetitions at 67% of 1RM?>?2nd set: 10 repetitions at 75% of 1RM and 3rd set: 8 repetitions at 80% of 1RM). Both methods included the following exercises: leg press, knee extension, and squat with 1?min rest intervals between sets. Free speed of execution and maximum range of movement were encouraged throughout each set for both protocols. Blood samples were analyzed included glucose, testosterone (T), cortisol (C), T/C rate, growth hormone (GH), and lactate at 2 and 24?h post intervention.

Results: There were no observed differences in glucose, testosterone, GH, and lactate concentrations both at 2 and 24?h after the execution of the two training methods. However, significant increases in the levels of T/C rate and decrease on cortisol were observed immediately post exercise for both protocols.

Conclusions: Although no significant differences were observed between the two interventions in relation to the hormonal and metabolic parameters analyzed, both training methods promoted a favorable response, with a slight superiority noted for the CI method relative to the hormonal profile.     

Teaching Decision Theory Proof Strategies Using a Crowdsourcing Problem

Teaching how to derive minimax decision rules can be challenging because of the lack of examples that are simple enough to be used in the classroom. Motivated by this challenge, we provide a new example that illustrates the use of standard techniques in the derivation of optimal decision rules under the Bayes and minimax approaches. We discuss how to predict the value of an unknown quantity, θ ∈ {0, 1}, given the opinions of n experts. An important example of such crowdsourcing problem occurs in modern cosmology, where θ indicates whether a given galaxy is merging or not, and Y₁, …, Y_n are the opinions from n astronomers regarding θ. We use the obtained prediction rules to discuss advantages and disadvantages of the Bayes and minimax approaches to decision theory. The material presented here is intended to be taught to first-year graduate students.     

THE EFFECTS OF VARIABLE AND FIXED TRANSACTION COSTS ON OPTIMAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS

This paper studies the impact of variable and fixed transaction costs on investment decisions under conditions of risk. The decision model is first formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program. The following subjects are then examined: the structure of the investment frontier facing the investor and the effects of transaction costs on this frontier, the impact of transaction costs on the investor's optimal investment strategy, and the conditions for the equilibrium structure of risky asset prices and risk-return relationships. The main finding is that the relaxation of the assumption of the absence of transaction costs eliminates some of the most unattractive implications of the classic capital asset pricing model (CAPM) while preserving the more attractive implications of this model. Also, our model provides explanations for some discrepancies between the theoretical CAPM and empirical findings and, therefore, is a step toward narrowing the gap between theory and practice.     

Moving Toward a Holistic Conceptual Framework for Understanding Healthy Aging Among Gay Men

In the last four decades, we have witnessed vast and important transitions in the social, economic, political, and health contexts of the lived experiences of gay men in the United States. This dynamic period, as evidenced most prominently by the transition of the gay rights movement to a civil rights movement, has shifted the exploration of gay men’s health from one focusing primarily on HIV/AIDS into a mainstream consideration of the overall health and wellbeing of gay men. Against this backdrop, aging gay men in the United States constitute a growing population, for whom further investigations of health states and health-related disparities are warranted. In order to advance our understanding of the health and wellbeing of aging gay men, we outline here a multilevel, ecosocial conceptual framework that integrates salient environmental, social, psychosocial, and sociodeomgraphic factors into sets of macro-, meso-, and micro-level constructs that can be applied to comprehensively study health states and health care utilization in older gay men.     

Imagining Gender Research: Violence,Masculinity, and the Shop Floor

This paper starts by arguing that visual data enriches gender research in management and organizations. Through an analysis of drawings by factory shop‐floor workers, we show that organizational climate is interwoven with gender dynamics, that shop‐floor masculinity is not necessarily heterosexual, and that masculinity in the shop‐floor context includes oppression as an element of man's symbolic violence against man. We discuss the usefulness of this type of data in gender research in organizational analysis and explore the ways in which gender violence is expressed in organizations. Moreover, the drawings gathered at a newspaper printing site located in the North of England provide a means of showing the relationship between gender violence and the exercise of masculinities, sexuality and oppression. We conclude that the exercise of hegemonic masculinity is associated not only with sexuality but also with the oppression of subaltern enactments of masculinity.     

Hotel manager perceptions about corporate compliance in the tourism industry: an empirical regional case study in Spain

Journal of Management and Governance - Corporate cases and scandals of corruption have emerged in the hospitality industry. In Spain, the recent Criminal Code (1/2015) proposed an organisational...     

Forecasting German mortality using panel data procedures

Reliable forecasts of life expectancies are of importance for the financial stability of social security systems and the life insurance industry. A discrete-time stochastic process and a continuous-time stochastic process are proposed to model the dynamics of German mortality rates from which life expectancies are calculated. More precisely, a panel data model is utilized, which distinguishes between a common time effect and a common age effect. The model is easy to fit, yields interpretable parameters, and allows for a simple analysis of the forecast error. The main applications of the model are the forecast of mortality rates—and the resulting life expectancies—and the pricing of mortality derivatives.

The Social Economy in a Context of Austerity Policies: The Tension Between Political Discourse and Implemented Policies in Spain

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Governments face the challenge of fostering the social economy in a context of economic crisis and austerity policies....