Sources of tourist information used by Deaf people. Case study: the Polish Deaf community

The tourism sector is still failing to fully provide for the varied needs of people with a disability. If the current situation is to change, then the characteristics of these needs must be better identified. This paper presents the results of a study on sources of tourist information used by Deaf people, for whom the basic form of communication is sign language. The study was performed in Poland from 2004 to 2010 within the Deaf community (n?=?292) and (for comparison of results) among the hearing section of society (n?=?1780). It has shown that the primary sources of tourist information for both Deaf and hearing individuals are the Internet and the opinions of close ones. Tourist information should be disseminated using sign language. Deaf people must participate in the process of creating the Tourism Information System. The conclusions contain indications for tourism managers on ways of disseminating information to Deaf clients.     

When does transition increase the gender wage gap?

In the context of underlying stability in female participation rates, the gender wagegap, measured by the log of monthly wages, more than doubled in Belarus from 1996 to 2006. In this respect, the country has experienced a variant of the transition which occurred in the former Soviet Union where relative female wages fell by more than female participation. We have used the Machado and Mata (2005) analysis of the gender gap distribution. This reveals that the effect of coefficients on observed characteristics in widening the gap was increasing over time, especially in the lower and middle deciles of the wage distribution. At the same time, the effect of the characteristics themselves in reducing the gap was shrinking. The decomposition of changes in the gap over time, based on Juhn et al. (1991) , confirms that the contraction of women’s relative wages has been caused both by a deterioration in the observed characteristics of female workers and by the associated remuneration. Changes in the residual wage distribution tend to slightly reduce the gap rather than, as is the case elsewhere, to increase it. The analysis carried out in line with Neuman and Oaxaca (2004) suggests that the increased gap was not caused by sample selection. Instead, two observed factors are found to be mainly responsible for the results: hours of work have increased for men more than for women and women have experienced segregation in low‐wage industries.     

Analysis of foreign investment impact on the dynamics of national capitalization structure: A computational intelligence approach

Central and Eastern Europe countries are in the political and economic transitional process of merging with the European Union. How has foreign investment already transformed these countries’ economic sectors and how will it affect the national economies in terms of capitalization across economic sectors in the near future? Our prime consideration is portfolio investment impact on the dynamics of respective countries’ capitalization structure in terms of sectorial investment distribution. The proposed method rests on the artificial intelligence approach (neural network method), which is targeted to grasp non-linear dynamics of heterogeneous foreign investment impact on national capitalization structure.     

Maximum likelihood estimators of the dagum model parameters

This paper will show the sample size needed to provide good maximum likelihood estimators of the Dagum model parameters. The principal goal of this study is to verify the asymptotic properties of these estimators for finite sample sizes comparable to the ones employed in the real surveys (for example, the Labor Force Survey).     

Educational performance gaps in Eastern Europe

To assess the educational performance gaps in Eastern Europe, this article takes a look at the differences in PISA test scores between Finland and seven Eastern European countries, as well as between Eastern European countries. The methodology applied is a semiparametric version of the threefold Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition. We find that main part of the average test score gap cannot be explained by the individual characteristics. Furthermore, our analysis at different quantiles provides evidence that the average test score gaps are due to the fact that poorly performing students in Finland score much higher than poorly performing students in Eastern Europe.     

The new Form 8-K disclosures

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has mandated new disclosure requirements in Form 8-K, which became effective on August 23, 2004. The SEC expanded the list of items that have to be reported and accelerated the timeliness of these reports. This study examines the market reactions to 8-Ks filed under the new SEC regime and investigates whether periodic reports (10-K/Qs) became less informative under the new 8-K disclosure rules. We observe that the newly required 8-K items constitute over half of all filings and that most firms disclose the required items within the new shortened period (four business days). We find that all disclosed items (old and new) are associated with abnormal volume and return volatility around both the event and the SEC filing dates, and some items have significant return drifts after the SEC filings. Surprisingly, we find that the information content of periodic reports has not diminished by the more expansive and timely 8-K disclosures under the new guidance, possibly indicating that investors may use periodic filings to interpret the effects of material events that had been disclosed earlier.     

Who,if anyone,reacts to accrual information?

We show that the vast majority of investors ignore value-relevant accruals information when it is first released, but that investors who initiate trades of at least 5,000 shares tend to transact in the proper direction. These investors trade on accruals information only when the previously-announced earnings signal is non-negative. Unconditionally, those investors initiating the smallest trades appear to respond to accruals in the wrong direction, but further investigation suggests this behavior is explained by their attraction to attention-grabbing stocks. Finally, we find that those who trade on accruals information have insufficient market power to mitigate the accruals anomaly.     

Estimation of Concentration Measures and Their Standard Errors for Income Distributions in Poland

Measures of concentration (inequality) are often used in the analysis of income and wage size distributions. Among, them the Gini and Zenga coefficients are of greatest importance. It is well known that income inequality in Poland increased significantly in the period of transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. High income inequality can be a source of serious problems, such as increasing poverty, social stratification, and polarization. Therefore, it seems especially important to present reliable estimates of income inequality measures for a population of households in Poland in different divisions. In this paper, some estimation methods for Gini and Zenga concentration measures are presented together with their application to the analysis of income distributions in Poland by socio-economic groups. The basis for the calculations was individual data coming from the Polish Household Budget Survey conducted by the Central Statistical Office. The standard errors of Gini and Zenga coefficients were estimated by means of the bootstrap and the parametric approach based on the Dagum model.