Liberalisierungspolitik

Political-economic classics of different schools agreed that capitalism inherently and inevitably leads to a decline of market principles. We analyze indicators of liberalization policies for 21 OECD-countries in five economic and social policy fields and demonstrate that western industrialized countries are subject of a convergent trend towards market-creating policies??in stark contrast to the theoretical expectations of several political economy authors. At the latest during the first half of the eighties, the western democracies entered a new phase of economic liberalization, which continues up to the present. A methodological implication of our findings suggests that the methods of causal analysis of convergent liberalization policies may not be the same as those who have been applied for the analysis of development and consolidation of the varieties of capitalism in the postwar era.     

Immigration without adaptation: The psychological world of Russian immigrants in Israel

This study examines new immigrants from the former USSR, their attitudes, expectations and the awareness of change in themselves and in their fellow immigrants. Participants demonstrated attitudes toward the new society which differed dramatically depending on the sphere of life being examined: cultural, institutional, or quotidian. Participants displayed a tendency toward integration in the institutional and quotidian spheres, but not in the cultural. An attitude toward integration did not automatically lead to an awareness of change in the new immigrants themselves. Participants consistently reported higher degrees of change in fellow immigrants in comparison to themselves. The issue of preservation of self‐identity through socio‐cultural conservation is discussed, as well as the relevance of these findings for Vygotsky's cultural‐historical theory and Feuerstein's theory of mediated learning.     

Defining Women's Global Political Empowerment: Theories and Evidence

Although women's access to political power has increased tremendously, nowhere are women equal to men in their influence over and exercise of political authority. Scholarship on women's political empowerment is uneven and incomplete. This article interrogates ‘women's political empowerment’, considering its definition, measurement, and application. First, we establish that academics and practitioners have not articulated a clear definition of women's political empowerment. To fill this gap, we put forward a new definition that conceptualizes women's political empowerment as a transformative process. We then review existing social science literature on women's political empowerment. We argue that scholars must expand research to develop a broader vision of women's political empowerment and develop measures that capture this breadth.     

Misbeliefs About Gambling in a Convenience Sample from the General Population

We examined knowledge about the role of randomness in gambling and the principle of independence of events, in a community sample. We also investigated whether this knowledge varies according to gender and age. A convenience sample of 1257 residents in French-speaking Switzerland, aged 18–88 years (28.5% of women) completed a short online questionnaire. This assessed the perceived role of human skills in four different games as well as beliefs relating to the principle of independence of events. The results show that 19.5% of the respondents perceived Roulette as a game for which the outcome is determined by skill. They also showed that 15.1% of the respondents did not hold beliefs about the independence of events principle. Gender and age differences were also observed: Men were proportionally more likely to hold erroneous beliefs about gambling skills and the independence of events, compared to women. The 18–25 year-old age group attributed Roulette outcomes to the gambler’s skill more frequently than the older categories. The implications of these findings for prevention and social support are discussed.     

Harmful care. To what extent is terminology from medicine and clinical psychology applicable to out‐of‐home care?

Research concerning outcomes for children who have been placed in out‐of‐home care has indicated that the care may have unwanted consequences. However, there has been no coherent terminology for differentiating between different types of such unwanted consequences. In this article therefore, we attempt to disentangle different aspects of potentially harmful care for looked after children, as well as to discuss potential pathways to more systematically approach and report adverse events for this group. In this endeavour, we turn to two adjacent disciplines, medicine and psychology, where these issues have received more interest. The applicability of the concepts used in these fields is discussed, and it is concluded that although they provide some help in categorizing different aspects of harmful care, the complexity of out‐of‐home care makes existing models difficult to adopt without adjustments. This has consequences for the possibility of evaluating care in research, as well as for monitoring adverse events in practice. Importantly, the causality will often be unknown. We therefore suggest that it is essential to shed more light on how decisions should be made about when to intervene or not in out‐of‐home care, despite limited information.     

Bewertung intertemporaler Abh?ngigkeiten zwischen IT-Projekten

Companies often decide in favour of IT investments (especially IT infrastructure investments) only because these investments build the foundation for more lucrative follow-up investments. Those intertemporal interdependencies among IT projects have to be considered within the scope of a value-based IT portfolio management. Therefore, current literature suggests the use of real options analysis??and therefore the application of option pricing models such as the binomial model or the Black-Scholes model. Both models require a complete market. However, because IT projects are characterized by project specific risks, which cannot be duplicated on a capital market, the forthright application of these models is problematic. This issue has been addressed within the scope of the discrete binomial model so far. In this paper we transfer these findings to the Black-Scholes model. Furthermore, we apply this approach to a real case and illustrate how a correct consideration of project specific risks using the Black-Scholes model can affect investment decisions.