Media’s role in the making of a democrat: Evidence from East Germany

This paper explores the causal influence of media content on voting behavior. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic. Focusing on federal and state election outcomes in the post-reunification decade (i.e., a time at which TV content was harmonized), we find that municipalities that had access to Western TV broadcasts before reunification have lower vote shares for left-wing and right-wing extremist parties. With regard to potential channels, we provide evidence based on survey data that GDR citizens with access to West German TV were less loyal to the socialist regime, less hostile toward foreigners, and exhibited higher levels of social capital. Our findings thus support the notion that access to free media influences political attitudes and facilitates the consolidation of democracy.     

Defence and Promotion of Desired State Identity in Russia’s Strategic Narrative

This article examines how the Russian state promotes and protects its preferred self-identity, using the conceptual framework of ‘strategic narrative’. Nation branding practices, including state-funded ‘mega-projects’ like the Sochi Olympics, have contributed to the narrative by characterising Russia as a welcoming, attractive destination. However, a more salient feature of Russia’s strategic narrative is intense ‘anti-Western’ and ‘anti-American’ political and media discourse, formulated to defend against rival, threatening narratives projected from other countries. Through analysis of official statements and state television content, this article demonstrates how determination to protect ‘great power’ and ‘European’ identities underlay Russia’s strategic narrative in 2014. It considers responses which the narrative has prompted, arguing that desired results in domestic reception have been achieved at the expense of unsatisfactory results internationally. Heavy-handed attacks on the identities of other states boost collective self-esteem among Russian citizens, but they fail to produce – and arguably obstruct – desired responses among foreign audiences.     

Popular Geopolitics,Audiences and Identities: Reading the ‘War on Terror’ in the Philippines

Audience research has traditionally been neglected within the subfield of popular geopolitics. However in recent years, geographers are increasingly focusing on the making of geopolitical meanings by audiences as they consume popular culture and related texts. Drawing on recent assemblage thinking in geopolitics, this paper argues that audiences form part of the animators of a network that links the human body with places, environments, objects and discourses related to geopolitics. By investigating Filipinos’ critical readings of and engagements with the ‘war on terror’ in Mindanao as represented through the national newspaper, the Philippines Daily Inquirer, the agency and power of audiences in the creative enactments of geopolitics and geography are illuminated. As such, understanding the complex interactions between popular media and its audiences can prove useful in casting insights into the everyday, geopolitical ‘playing out’ of issues of terrorism, violence and peace in the Philippines context and beyond.     

Africa’s industrialization and China’s OFDI in the manufacturing sector: rationales and practices

The article examines the rationales and practices for three types of manufacturing outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into Africa in the context of the cooperation between Africa’s industrialization and China’s OFDI on manufacturing. African economies have achieved impressive growth in the new century, but sustainable economic growth in this vast continent is still constrained by lagging industrialization and weak manufacturing sector. While China’s economy has made great achievements in Gross Domestic Product growth and poverty reduction, it witnessed hikes of factor price such as wage, land and exchange rate at varying degrees in the recent decade, imposing pressure on economic restructuring. Against the background, the new trend of Chinese manufacturing OFDI provides new opportunities for Africa to solve structural problems of weak manufacturing. Policy implications of this study on China–Africa industrial capacity cooperation are briefly discussed.     

Securing Japan in the ‘West’: The US-Japan Alliance and Identity Politics in the Asian Century

Why has the military dimension of the US-Japan relationship remained the central point of reference for Japanese foreign relations, despite the demise of the Soviet Union? Why has Japan, deepening economic interdependence notwithstanding, remained politically distant from East Asia? Based on analysis of statements by Japanese and US political elites and academics regarding the US-Japan alliance, this article argues that the rise of China, coterminous with the rise of ‘Asia’, challenges the notion of the ‘West’ as, according to standards of industrial modernity, a superior social and political order. These moving ideational boundaries question Japan’s position as the most advanced Asian nation and member of the (Western) international society of states. Therefore, the US-Japan alliance has since the mid-1990s become increasingly important for securing Japan in the ‘West’ and the ‘West’s boundaries in East Asia.     

Market Shares and Concentration in the EU Auditing Industry: the Effects of Andersen’s Demise

This paper describes and analyses changes at the concentration level of the audit services markets in 15-EU member-countries. The sample consists of 2,862 clients of auditing firms for the period 1998 to 2004. The findings of the research show that concentration in the aggregate sample increased over time. Concentration in the audit markets of the EU-15 member-countries exhibits substantial variation across countries while average concentration, before and after Arthur Andersen’s dissolution, has increased in 12 and declined in three countries. Results segmented by economic sectors indicate that the concentration increased in all sectors except Energy, which is the sector with the highest concentration. Overall, the empirical results suggest that there are complexities in our understanding of auditing services markets for competition purposes.

Women’s investment in career and the household division of labour

This paper examines how partners in a couple share domestic work according to the woman’s investment in career. Investment is measured relatively to other women or to the partner. While previous studies mainly focused on the influence of wages and earnings, we extend them by considering more dimensions describing the intensity of the woman’s attachment to the labour market. We use the 2010 French Time Use survey to estimate a model of household division of labour in dual earner couples. We find that the more women are invested in career, the less domestic work they perform during weekdays, which is partly substituted by their partners but only on weekend days. The sharing of tasks is thus less unequal in those couples. However, women still spend more time than their partners on average performing domestic work, even when the woman outperforms him in career, implying no role reversal in the division of labour.     

Cost-effectiveness of continuous subcutaneous apomorphine in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease in the UK and Germany

Abstract

Background:

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting ～5.2 million people worldwide. Continuous subcutaneous apomorphine (CSAI) represents an alternative treatment option for advanced PD with motor fluctuation. The purpose of this analysis was to estimate the cost-effectiveness of CSAI compared with Levodopa/carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG), Deep-Brain-Stimulation (DBS) and Standard-of-care (SOC).

Methods:

A multi-country Markov-Model to simulate the long-term consequences, disease progression (Hoehn & Yahr stages 3–5, percentage of waking-time in the OFF-state), complications, and adverse events was developed. Monte-Carlo simulation accounted for uncertainty. Probabilities were derived from RCT and open-label studies. Costs were estimated from the UK and German healthcare provider’s perspective. QALYs, life-years (LYs), and costs were projected over a life-time horizon.

Results:

UK lifetime costs associated with CSAI amounts to £78,251.49 and generates 2.85 QALYs and 6.28 LYs (€104,500.08, 2.92 QALYs and 6.49 LYs for Germany). Costs associated with LCIG are £130,011.34, achieves 3.06 QALYs and 6.93 LYs (€175,004.43, 3.18 QALYs and 7.18 LYs for Germany). The incremental-cost per QALY gained (ICER) was £244,684.69 (€272,914.58). Costs for DBS are £87,730.22, associated with 2.75 QALYs and 6.38 LYs (€105,737.08, 2.85 QALYs and 6.61 LYs for Germany). CSAI dominates DBS. SOC associated UK costs are £76,793.49; 2.62 QALYs and 5.76 LYs were reached (€90,011.91, 2.73 QALYs and 6 LYs for Germany).

Conclusions:

From a health economic perspective, CSAI is a cost-effective therapy and could be seen as an alternative treatment to LCIG or DBS for patients with advanced PD.     

Macroeconomic Effects of Serbia’s Integration in the EU and the Euro Area

International Advances in Economic Research - In 2009, Serbia officially applied for European Union (EU) membership. In 2014, membership negotiations began. After joining the EU, Serbia will have...     

The linkages,persistence, asymmetry in the volatility,the price discovery and efficiency,and the effect of the US subprime mortgage financial crisis on the spot and the futures market’s returns: the case of India

This article examines the effects of persistence, asymmetry and the US subprime mortgage crisis on the volatility of the returns and also the price discovery, efficiency and the linkages and causality between the spot and futures volatility by using various classes of the ARCH and GARCH models, and through the Granger’s causality. We have used two indices: one for spot and the other for futures, for the daily data from 12 June 2000 to 30 September 2013 from Nifty stock indices. We have then tested for ARCH effects, and subsequently employed various models of the ARCH and GARCH conditional volatility. The GARCH(1,1) model is found to be significant, and it implies that the returns are not autocorrelated and have ‘short memory’. It supports the hypothesis of the efficiency of the markets. The negative ‘news’ has more significant effect on volatility, corroborating the ‘leverage impact’ in finance on market volatility. We have also tested the volatility spillover effects. The two methods we employed support the spillover effects and the causality is bidirectional. We also have used the dummy variable for the US subprime mortgage financial crisis and found that they are statistically significant. Indian stock market is thus integrated to the world stock markets.     

China’s Contingencies: Critical Geopolitics,Chinese Exceptionalism and the Uses of History

This paper examines the intimate relationship between narratives emanating from China and their uses of Chinese history, and how such perspectives inform China’s geopolitical positioning and practices in lieu of its purported ‘rise’. Taking inspiration from the deconstructive impetus of critical geopolitics, this article contends that these historical claims to China’s rise constitute deterministic accounts, hinging on the notion of Chinese exceptionalism to provide discursive backing for a Sinocentric geopolitical order in the coming decades. This in turn downplays ‘alternative’ historiographies that can shed light on how the nature of China’s emergence may be more dependent on and shaped by the external environment than previously acknowledged. Building on the historical-geographical expositions related to the idea of contingency, this article demonstrates how China (whether it be in the past or present) cannot be seen as operating in a vacuum but has to constantly negotiate and adjust its strategy of engagements/interactions based on the specific demands imposed by world politics. Specifically, by elucidating these dimensions through cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan, it is argued that understanding China’s contingencies can raise important questions for us to critically appreciate the contextual actors, processes and relationships that differentially impact on China’s engagements in the world.     

Productivity and Employment in the Information Economy: What Kaldor’s and Verdoorn’s Growth Laws Can Teach the US

During the last decade of the 20th century the US economy experienced the longest economic boom since World War II. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are seen as one of the main reasons for this development and it is still an open question how ICT will affect growth and employment in the future. To evaluate this process Kaldors growth laws, especially Verdoorns law are reconsidered. It will be discussed which changes in the Verdoorn-Coefficient (VC) and the employment threshold (ET) can be expected due to ICT. Induced technical progress and increasing returns to scale could make future economic growth to be less labor-intensive. A simple OLS estimation using data for the US non-farm sector indicates that the VC increased in the second half of the 1990s. Thus, more output growth is required to keep employment constant.The author gratefully acknowledges the most valuable comments from two anonymous referees and the participants of the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) at the Vienna University of Economics (WU), May 21–22, 2004. Any remaining errors are my own.     

Determinants of bank’s interest margin in the aftermath of the crisis: the effect of interest rates and the yield curve slope

Empirical Economics - This paper analyses the determinants of net interest margin, focusing on the impact of interest rates and the slope of the yield curve, using a broad panel of data from 32...     

Bankruptcy in the pulp and paper industry: market’s reaction and prediction

This paper examines North American pulp and paper company bankruptcies that occurred between 1990 and 2009. We demonstrate that shareholders suffer substantial losses (37 %) during the month a bankruptcy occurs. Encouragingly, we show that financial ratios are useful in predicting firm failure and that failed firms are less profitable, more liquidity constrained and higher in debt leverage. Using a binary logit model in the spirit of Ohlson (J Acc Res, 19, 109–131, 1980), we predict financial distress for pulp and paper firms 1 to 2 years ahead of the bankruptcy. We also adapt and re-estimate the empirical model on a sample of pulp and paper firms and perform in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts. For the out-of-sample analysis, our re-estimated Ohlson models correctly predict 93 % of bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy outcomes.     

Consumption,Identity, and the Sociocultural Constitution of “Preferences”: Reading Women's Magazines

This paper shows how the concept of identity may figure importantly into shifts in preferences and patterns of consumption. We explore the 1970s emergence of the “working woman” – a woman who worked outside the home and regarded work as central to her identity. Women's magazines were especially involved in working out the “working woman” image, stressing how products could be used to attain her readily-identifiable appearance and efficient, pleasant home life. As such, they played into a shift in social valuation of female identities – away from those centered on traditional feminine pursuits, towards those centered on intensified labor-force involvement, consumerism, and commodified private life.