Food Prices,Government Subsidies and Fiscal Balances in South Mediterranean Countries

Soaring food and energy prices sparked the revolts in Northern African countries at the end of 2010. This article investigates empirically the impact of world food prices on inflation and government subsidies for Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territories and Tunisia during the ten‐year period 2002–11. Its findings reveal an asymmetry in the response of consumer‐price inflation to shocks in world food prices that made inflation rise fast while nominal rigidities prevented it from falling. Moreover, it shows that government balances deteriorated to 2% of GDP in 2008 and 2011 owing to the incremental government food subsidies, while they hardly improved in value terms when world prices fell sharply in 2009.     

Gender Gaps in Educational Outcomes Among Children of New Migrants: The Role of Social Integration from a Comparative Perspective

This article reviews current research on gender gaps in educational outcomes among children of new migrants (first, 1.5, and second generations) from a comparative cross‐national perspective. The article examines potential explanations for why gendered differences in educational outcomes among immigrants (vis‐à‐vis non‐migrants) continue to occur, focusing on individual, schooling, and institutional factors. For example, while gender gaps in expectations and aspirations as well as some cognitive outcomes are increasing (reading ability is considerably higher among females) and shrinking in specific subjects (e.g. math and science ability is slightly higher among boys), that process often has been less explored within and across immigrant vis‐à‐vis non‐immigrant students. We show that in some countries, gender gaps among disadvantaged ethnic minorities (in relation to other groups) continue to persist and are exacerbated by institutional factors. These disadvantages vary not only across different educational systems and at different rates over time but also are based on students' social background. Overall, we argue that these educational inequalities are key to understanding not only the socioeconomic and future political adaptation of migrants and their children but also future social policy developments in the European Union context.     

Rural structural change,poverty and income distribution: evidence from Peru

Some rural regions of Peru showed remarkable rates of poverty reduction and inequality reduction between 2004 and 2012, while others lagged behind. Using microsimulation-based decompositions, we analyse the driving forces behind these trends, finding that rural poverty and inequality reductions are mainly attributable to increasing labour incomes in Peru’s agricultural sector and, to a smaller extent, increasing public transfers. In earlier years, higher returns to experience drive these results, while in later years, increasing staple-crop yields and prices are of key importance. Further, remuneration of working hours increases in reaction to labour-supply shortages in rural areas. The accompanying rising incomes and non-agricultural job creation is less pro-poor than would be ideal, as they benefit more highly skilled workers. Further, shrinking farm sizes hampers poverty reduction and income-inequality reduction. Policies should target the participation of the poor in high-value (non-)agricultural activities, especially if positive trends in commodity prices are only transitory.     

Der Missbrauch mit dem Missbrauch

Lukas, hero of the movie “Jagten”, is the only male teacher in a small town kindergarten. He is a supposed perpetrator but an innocent man and we experience, how suspicions turn to apparent certainties in kindergarten and the rural community. Klara, a kindergartenchild, loves Lukas, but when she feels refused by him, she tells the female leader of the kindergarten, that Lukas is malevolent, and being urged by her, that she saw his penis. Unprofessional handling of the situation, leading questions and premature blaming mount to uncontrolled emotional displays regarding the topic of sexual abuse in kindergarten and community. It ends in hunting Lukas and his expulsion.     

Inszenierungen von Macht und Ohnmacht bei der Auftragsklärung und im Erstkontakt

Performances of power and powerlessness can be performed or enacted at the very beginning between counselor and client system. To create a “potential space” (Winnicott) it is essential to discover the play of power and weakness initially to take benefit from it for the counselling process. Four cases illustrate variations of this kind and their handling.     

Cultural and Personal Dimensions in Human Life

The closing panel of the 7th NMCOP Conference discussed issues at the interface of individual development and culture. While social work psychotherapists have always recognized the impact of culture on the individual, current psychoanalytic explorations and theorizing are attending to basic assumptions about living that vary considerably among cultures, are deeply embedded in the unconscious, and profoundly affect psychological development and functioning. Awareness of these differences is essential when the therapist encounters a patient from a culture that is very different from her own and when the language used in psychotherapy is a foreign one for the patient. Experiences are processed in the symbol system of the language in which they occurred. Psychotherapy for the foreign born includes a process of translation of experiences to which a sensitive psychotherapist needs to attune herself.     

A comparison of statistical methods for combining relative bioactivities from parallel line bioassays

This paper compares the ordinary unweighted average, weighted average, and maximum likelihood methods for estimating a common bioactivity from multiple parallel line bioassays. Some of these or similar methods are also used in meta‐analysis. Based on a simulation study, these methods are assessed by comparing coverage probabilities of the true relative bioactivity and the length of the confidence intervals computed for these methods. The ordinary unweighted average method outperforms all statistical methods by consistently giving the best coverage probability but with somewhat wider confidence intervals. The weighted average methods give good coverage and smaller confidence intervals when combining homogeneous bioactivities. For heterogeneous bioactivities, these methods work well when a liberal significance level for testing homogeneity of bioactivities is used. The maximum likelihood methods gave good coverage when homogeneous bioactivities were considered. Overall, the preferred methods are the ordinary unweighted average and two weighted average methods that were specifically developed for bioassays. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.