What do women really want? Exploring contemporary Ukrainian women’s magazines

Around the world, magazines for women have been one of the most popular media forms. Such periodicals have played and continue to play an important role in the production, reproduction to hegemonic cultural norms around gender, class, race, and sexuality, as well as challenges to such norms. Based on our reading of these magazines and drawing upon data from a survey and from interviews with a wide age range of women readers, we argue that Ukrainian women’s periodical press does not fully meet the needs of its audience in today’s society. The interests of women are much broader than the topics presented in these publications. Our study reveals that women readers are of the view that there is a need to expand the range of content to include a wider array of practical advice, educational, social, and political material. Finally, our research findings suggest that the narrow range of stereotypical gender-based content typically found in such magazines contributes to placing limits on what is imaginable and therefore politically possible in terms of advancing women’s equality in the Ukraine.     

Statistical hypothesis testing for the shape of impulse response function

The problem of estimation of unknown response function of a time-invariant continuous linear system is considered. Integral sample input–output cross-correlogram is taken as an estimator of the response function. The inputs are supposed to be zero-mean stationary Gaussian process. A criterion on the shape of impulse response function is given. For this purpose, we apply a theory of square–Gaussian random processes and estimate the probability that supremum of square–Gaussian process exceeds the level specified by some function.     

New characteristics for portfolio surveillance

This paper elaborates the tools for the surveillance of the global minimum variance portfolio weights. Golosnoy and Schmid [V. Golosnoy and W. Schmid, EWMA control charts for optimal portfolio weights, Sequential Anal. 26 (2007), pp. 195–224] introduced exponentially weighted moving average-type control charts for this task based on the processes of the estimated weights as well as of their first differences. This paper proposes the new approximations to these processes exhibiting better stochastic properties for sequential monitoring purposes. The control schemes for the new processes are compared for different types of economically relevant changes using Monte Carlo simulations. The suggested procedures appear to be superior for the considered performance measures.     

Open Access,Equity, and Strong Economy in Developing and Transition Countries: Policy Perspective

Since January 2007, Ukraine has a law mandating open access to publicly funded research. Most of the Parliament members supported it. The law is already the second parliamentary inquiry mandating the Cabinet of Ministers to take actions on creating favorable conditions for developing open access repositories in archives, libraries, museums, and scientific and research institutions with open access conditions to publicly funded research. Nevertheless, the “bottom-up” approaches of Ukrainian universities and research centers as well as political support from the principle legislative body in the country, have still not resulted in a network of well-functioning institutional repositories. The article highlights recent open access developments and presents the lists of open access benefits for the developing and transition countries and regions.     

What Can Migration Policymakers Learn From Legal Frameworks on National Minorities? National Minorities and Migration in Armenia and Belarus

The dissolution of the USSR resulted in massive depopulation of the republics and unprecedented migration flows, including national minorities. Citizens of a once indivisible country were suddenly divided into “those of our kind” (natives) and “outsiders” (national minorities/ immigrants). The latter were often not guaranteed citizenship and were denied basic rights. Many national minorities became forced migrants and refugees, leaving neighbouring states because of discrimination or fearing violence. This article focuses primarily on the interconnection of minority and migration issues, two topics which are often discussed separately. It investigates the interrelation between migration and the minority regimes adopted by Armenia and Belarus, and the extent to which certain policies and rights for national minorities can be meaningfully extended to new migrant minorities. It also asks what lessons can be learnt from the treatment of national minorities as far as future migration legislation is concerned.

Policy Implications

• Migrants' participation policy is always based on implicit political models of participation that should always be made explicit and examined before implementation.
• There is always a plurality of political preferences, for different models of participation in the migrant population, that should be explored and accommodated.
• The number of associations in existence should not be used as an indicator of a strong civil society as much as it is at present.

     

Rent-seeking for a public good with additive contributions

We analyze rent-seeking for a public good with two groups, where the provision of a public good is decided in the all-pay contest where “the winner takes all”. We assume that the valuation of the public good varies across groups, but is the same for all members within a group. Free-riding in such situation was predicted by Baik et al. (J Public Econ 82(3):415–429, 2001). We describe a continuum of equilibria where all players make contributions. There is room for substantial payoff asymmetry, which ranges from equal payoffs to all group members to a zero payoff for the player who makes a contribution and positive payoffs for free-riders. The results generalize for the case where the prize has both a private and a public component.     

THE ATTACK‐AND‐DEFENSE GROUP CONTESTS: BEST SHOT VERSUS WEAKEST LINK

This study analyzes a group contest in which one group (defenders) follows a weakest link, whereas the other group (attackers) follows a best shot impact function (IF). We fully characterize the Nash and coalition‐proof equilibria and show that with symmetric valuation the coalition‐proof equilibrium is unique up to the permutation of the identity of the active player in the attacker group. With asymmetric valuation, it is always an equilibrium for one of the highest valuation players to be active; it may also be the case that the highest valuation players in the attacker group free‐ride completely on a group member with a lower valuation. However, in any equilibrium, only one player in the attacker group is active, whereas all the players in the defender group are active and exert the same effort. We also characterize the Nash and coalition‐proof equilibria for the case in which one group follows either a best shot or a weakest link but the other group follows an additive IF. (JEL C72, D70, D72, D74, H41)     

Statistical surveillance of the mean vector and the covariance matrix of nonlinear time series

The purpose of this paper is to jointly monitor the mean vector and the covariance matrix of multivariate nonlinear times series. The underlying target process is assumed to be a constant conditional correlation process Bollerslev (Rev Econ Stat 72:498–505, 1990) or a dynamic conditional correlation model Engle (J Bus Econ Stat 20:339–350, 2002). We introduce several EWMA and CUSUM control charts. These control schemes are based on univariate EWMA statistics, multivariate EWMA recursions, and different types of cumulative sums. The recursions are applied to local measures for means and covariances, e.g. the present observations and the conditional covariances. Further, they are applied to means and covariances of residuals. The control statistics are obtained by computing the Mahalanobis distance between the EWMA or CUSUM statistics and their expectations if no change occurs. Via Monte Carlo simulation the performance of the proposed charts is compared. Our empirical study illustrates an application of these control procedures to bivariate logarithmic returns of the European indices FTSE100 and DAX. In order to assess the performance of the introduced schemes we apply the average run length and the maximum conditional expected delay.