Tractor accidents in Swedish traffic

The objective of this study is to reach a better understanding of accidents on Swedish roads involving tractors and to suggest ways of preventing them. In an earlier study we analyzed police-reported fatal accidents and accidents that led to physical injuries from 1992 to 2005. During each year of this period, tractors were involved in 128 traffic accidents on average, an average of 7 people were killed, 44 sustained serious injuries, and 143 sustained slight injuries. The number of fatalities in these tractor accidents was about 1.3% of all deaths in traffic accidents in Sweden. Cars were most often involved in the tractor accidents (58%) and 15% were single vehicle accidents. The mean age of the tractor driver involved was 39.8 years and young drivers (15-24 years) were overrepresented (30%). We are now increasing the data collected with the years 2006-2010 in order to study the changes in the number of accidents. Special attention will be given to the younger drivers and to single vehicle accidents. Based on the results we aim to develop suggestions for reducing road accidents, e.g. including measures for making farm vehicles more visible and improvement of the training provided at driving schools.     

The relevance of temporal iconicity with instruction manuals for elderly users

Gerontolinguistic obtains a growing importance with the increase of elderly users due to Demographic Change. Since acceptance and ease of use of supportive systems for elderly, such as "E-Nursing-Assistants", are highly dependent on the age suitable design of readable instructions, an age-appropriate linguistic concept is of high value for usability. There has been only little research on the relevance of foreign words, signal words, textual arrangement, optical accentuation of key terms and temporal iconicity concerning older users. Thus, an efficient design of age suitable manual instructions within a medical context still remains to be done. The objective of this research was to evaluate the relevance of the previously mentioned factors in the context of written instructions. For this, an empirical survey was designed which was given to 45 study participants. The subjects of the experiment were given 4x3 instructions after a pretest questionnaire. The aim was to execute these instructions as correctly and quickly as possible. Furthermore the instructions were rated regarding comprehensibility with a retrospective questionnaire.     

Why does class matter? Policy attitudes,mechanisms, and the case of the Nordic countries

In most democracies, classes tend to vary with respect to an array of attitudes and behaviours, and differences are large within a number of European polities. What mechanisms lie behind these differences? Do they relate primarily to individuals’ material interests, as assumed by traditional class theories, or instead, to socialization and self-selection factors? This paper seeks to extend theory and research through an analysis of mechanisms behind class differences in policy attitudes. Our focus is on the Nordic countries, where class differences are extensive and well-documented in past scholarship. We take advantage of high-quality European Social Survey data for Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Analyzing three policy arenas and the 9-category European Socio-economic Classification scheme (ESeC), we find evidence that class-related factors help to explain cleavages in attitudes. Comparisons with the more detailed, 103-category International Standard Classification of Occupation scheme (ISCO) suggest that these factors explain less “micro-class” occupational variation. Results shed new light on mechanisms behind class differences, and the empirical foundations of established class theories. These and other implications are discussed in the conclusion.     

Collective empowerment: A comparative study of community work in Mumbai and Stockholm

Mumbai and Stockholm are worlds apart in terms of public services, infrastructures and standard of living. However, both cities have known common problems of social exclusion and marginalisation related to neo‐liberal globalisation. Social workers are facing similar challenges regarding collective empowerment as a strategy for community work. This comparative study explored how collective empowerment is undertaken by community workers. The research participants were 13 informants from community‐work organisations in the two settings. Semi‐structured interviews were used and were analysed with the help of Atlas‐ti 6.2 (ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH D‐10623 Berlin Germany). Social work in Mumbai is in a context of extreme poverty and mainly within the informal sector, whereas in Stockholm most social work is done in relation to a public welfare model. In Stockholm, interventions are aimed towards strengthening social networks, without direct aim at social change. In Mumbai, community workers organise people for collective empowerment to strengthen marginalised groups and achieve social change.     

Rényi entropy of m-generalized order statistics

Abstract

Characterizing relations via Rényi entropy of m-generalized order statistics are considered along with examples and related stochastic orderings. Previous results for common order statistics are included.     

The fertility contribution of Mexican immigration to the United States

Crucial to the long-term contribution of immigration to a receiving country's population is the extent to which the immigrants reproduce themselves in subsequent, native-born generations. Using conventional projection methodologies, this fertility contribution may be poorly estimated primarily because of problems in projecting the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing. We propose an alternative method that obviates the need to project the number of immigrants by using the full sending-country birth cohort as the risk group to project their receiving-country childbearing. This "sending-country birth cohort" method is found to perform dramatically better than conventional methods when projecting to 1999 from base years both before and after the large increase in inflows of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the late 1980s. Projecting forward from 1999, we estimate a cumulative contribution of Mexican immigrant fertility from the 1980s to 2040 of 36 million births, including 25% to 50% more births after 1995 than are projected using conventional methods.     

The influence of top management corporate networks on CEO succession

We analyze empirically how supervisory board members with multiple directorships affect the decision to hire an inside or outside CEO successor. While a growing number of both theoretical and empirical studies analyze the influence of corporate performance and size or the ownership structure on this decision, the role of multiple board memberships within the CEO recruitment process has been widely neglected so far. The present study is based on panel data of the largest German companies covering the period from 1996 to 2008. Applying competing risk estimations we find a weak and positive association between the number of external directorships of the supervisory board members and internal CEO replacements. Distinguishing between different groups of external board positions, we find that external executives on the supervisory board increase the likelihood of external CEO replacements. In line with empirical findings for the US we argue that external executives improve the assessment of potential CEO successors leading to more outside CEO replacements. In contrast, we find evidence that external supervisory board mandates of the supervisory board members cause more internal CEO replacements. This finding indicates a substitution of external expertise of the executives by multiple supervisory board mandates but could also reflect a reduction of the monitoring intensity of the supervisory board.     

The value of acquisition price differentiation in reverse logistics

The quality of returned products may vary greatly, depending on their previous usage. Since the remanufacturing of products in good condition is more economically rewarding for the remanufacturer—and since even for non-remanufacturable products the value that can be extracted from their parts or materials may depend on the products’ quality—it seems logical to acquire used products of different quality levels at different prices. However, acquisition price differentiation requires the product quality to be revealed, i.e. the products are graded before their actual acquisition. We observe two different approaches in current practice. The first one is a decentralized system with several collection sites to which the customers can bring their used products. After a short grading procedure, they receive a specific acquisition price offer for their products, which they can accept or decline directly. The second setting is a reverse logistics system with a centralized grading facility. The final grading is conducted after shipping the used products to this specific facility. Motivated by these empirical observations, we compare the two strategies with the help of a continuous approximation model. We derive analytical expressions for the optimal pricing and network density decision and show that, in addition to the other factors discussed in the literature, acquisition price differentiation can be a reason for decentralizing the reverse logistics network, if the product quality is uncertain. Furthermore, we illustrate our results with a numerical example.