Climate,diseases, and the origins of corruption

It has been commonly observed that tropical countries tend to suffer from intense corruption and underdevelopment. This study provides an explanation for this long-standing disparity across the world based on variation in the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UV-R). The central hypothesis is that UV-R is positively associated with the (historical) prevalence of eye diseases, which significantly shortens work-life expectancy as a skilled worker. This helps shape the worldwide distribution of corruption by affecting the incumbents' window of opportunity. Using data for up to 139 countries, I consistently find empirical support for the positive relationship between UV-R and corruption. The main findings withstand accounting for numerous alternative explanations for international differences in corruption levels. Employing individual-level data from the World Values Survey, I document suggestive evidence that exposure to UV-R is linked to surveyed respondents' tolerance towards corrupt activities. Furthermore, a subnational analysis for China lends credence to the cross-country evidence.     

Influence of European Law on Argentinian Consumer Law

Journal of Consumer Policy - This article provides an overview on the social and political contexts of the rise of consumer legislation in Argentina, on the development of consumer law in Argentina...     

Trauma epidemiology in Puerto Rico: in-hospital morbidity and mortality from 2002 to 2011

This study aimed to describe the distribution of injury mechanisms and to assess the impact of those mechanisms on the morbidity and mortality of trauma. All patients admitted to Puerto Rico Trauma Hospital (2002–2011) for road-traffic collisions (RTCs, 5,371), gunshot wounds (GSWs, 2,946), falls (2,319), pedestrian accidents (1,652), and stab wounds (SWs, 1,073) were selected. Gunshot victims were 1.19 (95%CI: 1.07–1.33) times as likely as road-traffic victims to have an ISS ≥25. Pedestrians were 1.76 (95%CI: 1.49–2.09) times more likely to have a GCS ≤8 than road-traffic victims were. The risk of dying was 2.64 (95%CI: 2.20–3.16) times higher for gunshot victims and 1.51 (95%CI: 1.23–1.86) times higher for pedestrians compared to patients who had had RTCs. Gunshot victims and pedestrians had the worst clinical outcomes. Accordingly, these patients should receive the most aggressive clinical management. Furthermore, it is imperative to develop public health campaigns on trauma prevention.     

Fixed-Term Contracts and Labor Market Duality in France

The French labor market is segmented between permanent and temporary workers. The second category has difficulty in getting an open-ended contract. This paper aims at depicting workers on short-term contracts and shows the consequences on their professional career are negative and significant. A large part of the wage gap between permanent and temporary workers remains unexplained by observable characteristics. They receive less on-the-job training and their likelihood of obtaining a stable job is lower than 30% after 1 year and a half. They have also a higher probability of being the adjustment variable in case of an economic negative shock. These different findings show the importance of using public policies to encourage transitions from fixed-term to permanent employment and reducing labor-market duality.     

Past price ‘memory’ in the housing market: testing the performance of different spatio-temporal specifications

Recent methodological developments provide a way to incorporate the temporal dimension when accounting for spatial effects in hedonic pricing. Weight matrices should decompose the spatial effects into two distinct components: bidirectional contemporaneous spatial connections; and unidirectional spatio-temporal effects from past transactions. Our iterative estimation approach explicitly analyses the role of time in price determination. The results show that both spatio-temporal components should be included in model specification; past transaction information stops contributing to price determination after eight months; and limited temporal friction is exhibited within this period. These findings highlight the decidedly non-linear temporal patterns of such information effects.     

When trade unions turn to litigation: ‘getting all the ducks in a row’

Driven by their members' demands and the need to adopt more combative legal strategies in order to oppose the deterioration of working and employment conditions, British trade unions have developed in‐house legal expertise and supported many individual and multiple claims. This article investigates the variation in unions' legal practices and examines their organisational responses to law and the role of compliance professionals in the regulation of employment litigation. It provides a nuanced account of the influence of legal rationality on the framing of union strategies and shows that, under certain conditions, trade unions are able to build multi‐pronged tactics by using litigation as a complement to other forms of action.     

Academic leadership and commercial activities at research institutes: German evidence

This paper focuses on entrepreneurship by academic leaders. With the use of patents, inventions, and spin‐offs to measure commercialization, and directors, research group leaders, and business owners as academic leaders, results, using a sample of more than 2,500 German researchers, show differences across academic leaders and commercialization. Findings for spin‐offs are different from those for patents and inventions. Academic leaders in sciences were more likely to commercialize. Doctoral degrees helped patents by business owners and spin‐offs by group leaders, whereas female business owners and female group leaders faced challenges patenting and inventing, respectively. For business owners, age increased the likelihood of patenting but lowered spin‐offs.     

Information and Knowledge as Antecedents of Consumer Attitudes and Intentions to Buy and Recommend Fair-Trade Products

The authors propose and empirically test a causal model to understand how the availability of fair-trade information and consumer knowledge about this issue affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward fair-trade products. The model is built upon the attitude-behavior paradigm and the premises of agency theory. It is tested through structural equation modeling with a sample of 292 Spanish consumers. The findings are that consumers do not have good knowledge about fair trade and that this is significantly determined by the lack of information about this in the market. It is also observed that consumers’ perceptions about the availability of fair-trade information have negative effects on their concern about this issue and that such information as is available is not effective in reducing consumer skepticism. The research represents an extension of previous fair-trade literature because the role of information and communication in improving consumer attitudes and buying intentions has rarely been explored in the case of ethical products.     

Approximate maximum likelihood estimation for stochastic differential equations with random effects in the drift and the diffusion

Consider N independent stochastic processes \((X_i(t), t\in [0,T])\), \(i=1,\ldots , N\), defined by a stochastic differential equation with random effects where the drift term depends linearly on a random vector \(\Phi _i\) and the diffusion coefficient depends on another linear random effect \(\Psi _i\). For these effects, we consider a joint parametric distribution. We propose and study two approximate likelihoods for estimating the parameters of this joint distribution based on discrete observations of the processes on a fixed time interval. Consistent and \(\sqrt{N}\)-asymptotically Gaussian estimators are obtained when both the number of individuals and the number of observations per individual tend to infinity. The estimation methods are investigated on simulated data and show good performances.     

Application of Standardization Methods for Environmental Improvement as an Element of Quality of Life Through the Development of a Company’s Business Potential

Various aspects of sustainable development and quality of life are considered, including the impact of standardization. Particular attention is paid to the study of the role played by standardization in improving environmental protection. In this connection the significance of standardization is shown as a factor of improving the technological potential of an enterprise and the quality of life. Various approaches to methods for assessing the effective impact of standardization on the quality of life are analyzed.