Fibonacci helps to evacuate from a convex region in a grid network

This study considers an evacuation problem where the evacuees try to escape to the boundary of an affected area, which is convex, and a grid network is embedded in the area. The boundary is unknown to the evacuees and we propose an online evacuation strategy based on the Fibonacci sequence. This strategy is proved to have a competitive ratio of 19.5, which is better than the best previously reported result of 21.     

Heterogeneity,school-effects and the North/South achievement gap in Italian secondary education: evidence from a three-level mixed model

With the aim of assessing the extent of the differences in the context of Italian educational system, the paper applies multilevel modeling to a new administrative dataset, containing detailed information for more than 500,000 students at grade 6 in the year 2011/2012, provided by the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System. Data are grouped by classes, schools and geographical areas. Different models for each area are fitted, in order to properly address the heteroscedasticity of the phenomenon. The results show that it is possible to estimate statistically significant “school effects”, i.e., the positive/negative association of attending a specific school and the student’s test score, after a case-mix adjustment. Therefore, the paper’s most important message is that school effects are different in terms of magnitude and types in the three geographical macro areas (Northern, Central and Southern Italy) and are dependent on specific students’ and schools’ characteristics.     

The Paradox of Integration: Work-Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) and Productivist Welfare Regime in Hong Kong

After the Asian Financial Crisis, the government of Hong Kong embraced the model of work-integration social enterprise (WISE) to sustain its facilitative and productivist welfare regime. Using the WISE of Pro-Love for marginalized women as a case study, the article examines the meaning of employment and social disadvantage in the organization. The ethnographic data reveal that while the WISE encourages women to participate in the paid labor market, it constructs employment in the social enterprise as part-time jobs for supplementary family income, restricts the extension of social networks for the female workers, and reinforces the cultural stereotypes of marginalized women. The study reflects on the mechanisms of the project of WISE in the welfare contexts of Hong Kong, and argues that programs targeted at labor participation cannot be automatically translated into reduction of exclusion in other domains. Long-term planning, policy coordination, and social advocacy are necessary to achieve social integration.     

The psychometric and empirical properties of measures of risk preferences

We examine the psychometric and empirical properties of some commonly used survey-based measures of risk preferences in a population-based sample of 11,000 twins. Using a model that provides a general framework for making inferences about the component of measured risk attitudes that is not due to measurement error, we show that measurement-error adjustment leads to substantially larger estimates of the predictive power of risk attitudes, of the size of the gender gap, and of the magnitude of the sibling correlation. Risk attitudes are predictive of investment decisions, entrepreneurship, and drinking and smoking behaviors; are robustly associated with cognitive ability and personality; and our estimates are often larger than those in the literature. Our results highlight the importance of adjusting for measurement error across a wide range of empirical settings.     

Quantifying Economic Dependency

In this paper we compare several types of economic dependency ratios for a selection of European countries. These dependency ratios take into account not only the demographic structure of the population, but also the differences in age-specific economic behaviour such as labour market activity, income and consumption as well as age-specific public transfers. In selected simulations where we combine patterns of age-specific economic behaviour and transfers with population projections, we show that in all countries population ageing would lead to a pronounced increase in dependency ratios if present age-specific patterns were not to change. Our analysis of cross-country differences in economic dependency demonstrates that these differences are driven by both differences in age-specific economic behaviour and in the age composition of the populations. The choice of which dependency ratio to use in a specific policy context is determined by the nature of the question to be answered. The comparison of our various dependency ratios across countries gives insights into which strategies might be effective in mitigating the expected increase in economic dependency due to demographic change.     

Social networks and the organisation of big business groups in post New Economic Policy (NEP) era in the 1990s in Malaysia

Personal ties are generally regarded as important to big business growth in Malaysia, particularly after the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1990s. Common types are informal ones established between multi-ethnic big business people and Malay key state and political leaders. Other types of ties, company directorship links and informal ties, are seldom studied especially those between the business people and former state bureaucrats and corporate professionals. Thus, by conceptualising the directorship links and informal personal ties as social networks, the author conducted a sociological analysis of some intra- and inter-ethnic directorship links and ties established by four prominent big businessmen after the NEP in the 1990s. This article reports the main finding on the links and ties becoming a common organisational mechanism of business groups owned and controlled by the businessmen, besides providing access to the state. Therefore, another understanding of inter- and intra-ethnic personal ties in big business growth, especially after the NEP is achieved.     

Human Development and National Culture: A Multivariate Exploration

We examine the relationship between different aspects of human development and Hofstede’s six dimensions of national culture. Using multivariate regression and canonical correlation analysis, we show that all the dimensions of national culture except masculinity have a significant impact on human development, and that the overall strength of the association between the two groups of variables is a high positive one. In general, the direction of the influence of the national culture variables on economic growth differs from the manner they influence other variables, which reinforces the fact that economic growth does not always translate into true people-centred development. Furthermore, the national culture dimensions do not explain much of the variation in a number of health indicators.     

International Migration,Remittances Inflow and Household Welfare: An Intra Village Comparison from Pakistan

This study explores the financial costs, time involved in migration and benefits at household level. A household survey has been conducted to investigate about characteristics of migrants, transaction costs and sources of financing by which overseas migration is financed. Results of PSM technique explored that overseas migration conveys worthwhile benefits as measured by their total expenditures, food expenditures, non-food expenditures, clothing expenditures, expenditures on pots and pans, expenditures on vehicles and saving levels. Establishment of technical training institutions, creation of micro-finance institutions and enhancing their functioning as well as sensitization about ‘Pakistan Remittance Initiative’ would be some of the policy options in order to tackle with the problem.     

Konfundierte Ergebnisse durch ein zu stark beschränktes Design?

Recently C. Czymara and A. Schmidt-Catran published in this journal (KZfSS 2016 (2)) a factorial Survey-Experiment to contribute to the current debate on the inflow of refugees in Germany. The authors concluded from their Survey-Experiment that in particular highly qualified immigrants who show little culture distance should get accepted in Germany, while for instance Muslim immigrants would be more strongly rejected. In this comment it is argued that authors’ results probably suffered from a strong confounder bias. The employed experimental design also allows for a lot of alternative interpretations. Therefore, readers of the original article or further users of the data should be more cautious when interpreting the results.     

Military Cultural Competence

This article offers a new definition of military cultural competence based on a review of the literature. As a starting point, the defining characteristics of military culture is discussed and includes the chain of command, military norms, and military identity. Having laid this groundwork, the multidimensionality of military cultural competence—attitudinal, cognitive, behavior—is discussed. Clinical applications of these various competencies are provided.