Women’s snowboarding – some experiences and perceptions of competition

This article focuses on female snowboarders’ experiences with, and perceptions of, snowboard competitions. The article is based on a study conducted at an international women’s snowboard camp. The purpose of the camp was to discuss strategies for promoting females’ participation in the snowboard organisations and in snowboard competition. Interviews were held with eight participants aged 18–31?years. Most of the participants had been previously involved in competition. Their experience had been both negative and positive. Most of the participants perceived snowboard facilities (Big air and Half-pipe) as being too large for females and a possible constraint on participation. Moreover, the study’s findings reveal ideas concerning alternative competition formats as well as arguments for ‘women-only’ sessions as a feasible way to reach more female snowboarders, to provide skill enhancement, and to increase participation in the competitions. The findings are discussed in light of the development of snowboarding and Bourdieu’s theoretical framework.     

Heat-related deaths

Risk factors and criteria for classifying deaths as heat related are discussed with emphasis on investigation of the circumstances.     

Measuring worker flows

The study explores differences between two measurement concepts of worker flows widely used in the literature referred to as the turnover and reallocation concepts. It is found that measuring worker flows by the turnover concept leads to substantially (about 5% of total employment) higher worker flow estimates and slightly increases age, size and industry group effects on firm level worker flows as well as differences between growing and declining firms relative to the reallocation concept.     

Persuasive Advertising and Product Differentiation

We suggest a simple framework for characterizing alternative ways that “persuasive advertising” may affect consumer preferences. We illustrate the implications of our theory—and contrast it with results from models of informative advertising—by analyzing the relationship between the degree of product differentiation and equilibrium levels of advertising. The analysis suggests that a positive relationship between equilibrium levels of advertising and (inherent) product substitutability is consistent only with advertising that “increases perceived product differences.”     

Will the Market Get it Right? The Placing of New Power Plants in Germany

This paper applies ELMOD, an economic-engineering model of the European electricity market to the issue of optimal investment placing of generation capacity in Germany under different market integration scenarios. The model is formulated as cost minimization approach. We conduct a scenario analysis comparing different rules for power plant placing in a national, a market-coupling and an integrated EU market approach. We find that there are great benefits for consumers and producers if taking into account network conditions and cross border congestion in generation location planning. Moreover a change from national planning to an integrated market planner perspective shows even more improvements in prices and network utilization.     

The economic burden of end-of-life care in metastatic breast cancer

Objective: To assess end-of-life (EOL) total healthcare costs and resource utilization during the last 6 months of claims follow-up among patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) who received systemic anti-neoplastic therapy.

Methods: Newly diagnosed females with MBC initiating treatment January 1, 2003–June 30, 2011 were identified in a large commercial claims database. Two cohorts were defined based on a proxy measure for EOL 1 month prior to the end of last recorded follow-up within the study period: patients who were assumed dead at end of claims follow-up (EOL cohort) and patients who were alive (no-end-of-life [NEOL] cohort). Proxy measures for EOL were obtained from published literature and clinical expert opinion. Cost and resource utilization were evaluated for the 6 months prior to end of claims follow-up. Baseline variables, resource utilization, and costs were compared between cohorts with univariate statistical tests. Adjusted relative risks were calculated for resource utilization measures. A covariate-adjusted generalized linear model evaluated 6-month total healthcare costs.

Results: Of the 3,878 females included, 18.5% (n?=?718) met the criteria for EOL. Mean observational time (MBC onset to end of claims follow-up) was shorter for the EOL cohort (EOL, 32 months vs NEOL, 35 months; p?p?2 times higher in the EOL cohort (p?Conclusions: Potential EOL presented a greater economic burden in the 6 months prior to death. EOL month-to-month costs increased precipitously in the last 2 months of life and were driven by acute inpatient care.     

Columbia Law School Roundtable on The Future Of Capitalism

In this discussion that took place at Columbia Law School's Millstein Center last October (and thus well before the appearance of the coronavirus), two distinguished English academics, a Pulitzer Prize‐winning journalist, and the executive chairman of a large American investment house discussed the role of corporations in addressing the crises that periodically beset the capitalist system. Sir Paul Collier opened with the comment that, although capitalism had shown itself to be the only effective system for mass human improvement in the past 10,000 years, it was now experiencing its “third serious derailment.” In each of the first two—the first in Northern England in the 1840s and the second during the Great Depression of the 1930s—capitalism was preserved in significant part by the “moral load‐bearing” performed by private companies and citizens. For capitalism to survive this third derailment, the public and private sectors must join forces to address what Collier to sees as the most formidable economic challenge: finding ways to transport urban jobs and capabilities to rural areas still reeling from two major blows—the first, a century ago to agriculture, and the second, for the past two or three decades, to large‐scale manufacturing. Collier's Oxford colleague Colin Mayer follows by calling on public companies to formulate and state a corporate social purpose that goes beyond maximizing their own long‐run shareholder values. And to encourage and support such a practice, Mayer urges the large universal owners that own large stakes in all the world's large listed companies not only to support and applaud such statements, but to find ways to ensure that companies are living up to them. Alan Schwartz, Executive Chairman of Guggenheim Partners, responds by noting that capitalism has been forced to make major adjustments throughout its history. And consistent with Collier's observations, Schwartz argues that the global economic order should have been preparing for the past 30 or 40 years for its biggest challenge: creating a global economy dynamic enough to provide jobs for some two or three billion new unskilled workers spawned by the globalization of the world economy. The American private sector, after having lost much of its efficiency and value in the 1970s, has since used continuous restructuring to produce enormous productivity gains and value. And although generally supportive of the thinking behind the Business Roundtable's recent statement, Schwartz deplores the confusion that continues to surround the message. Those corporate leaders now endorsing the pursuit of social goals are by no means asking their shareholders to accept below‐market returns on investment. In well‐run companies focused on long‐run efficiency and value, there is no inherent conflict between the interests of shareholders and the long‐run interests of other major stakeholders. In such companies, customers, employees, suppliers, and local communities all end up better served.     

Social business collaboration at the bottom of the pyramid: The case of orchestration

Social business orchestrators (SBOs) help social businesses of various sizes to tackle major societal issues by filling gaps in knowledge and resources. However, research has overlooked these types of collaboration. Situated within a bottom of the pyramid context in Bangladesh, the current study sheds light on the process of value creation for SBO–social businesses partnerships by comparing different collaboration partners. Multiple case study research through the lens of the relational view were used to ask how SBOs facilitate value creation in social businesses by flexibly adapting resource inputs and governance mechanisms to the specific endowment and size of partners; this approach was informed by interviews and field note analyses. The combined deductive–inductive analysis enhances knowledge of idiosyncrasies of SBO–social business collaborations. Our study draws attention to the role of large orchestrators, whose model could be scaled and transferred to other world regions, including industrialised countries.     

The Asian flu and Russian virus: the international transmission of crises in firm-level data

This paper examines how the Asian and Russian crises affected different types of firms around the world. It constructs a new data set of financial statistics, industry information, geographic data, and stock returns for over 10?000 companies in 46 countries. Results show that firms competing with exports from the crisis countries, or with direct sales exposure to the crisis countries, had significantly lower abnormal stock returns. Firms with higher debt ratios, however, did not experience lower abnormal returns. Country-specific effects, although important determinants of company stock returns, are generally less important than firm-specific characteristics. These results suggest that trade channels are important factors determining how crises are transmitted internationally.