Fraud and its PREY: Conceptualising social engineering tactics and its impact on financial literacy outcomes

Financial literacy may not be as effective as previously thought in protecting against fraud victimisation. It does not inoculate investors from persuasion or social engineering tactics used by offenders to secure investment in fraudulent schemes. In fact, recent research indicates that overconfidence in investment knowledge may make individuals more susceptible to fraud. Using boiler room fraud as a case study, this article introduces the PREY (Profiled, Relational, Exploitable and Yielding) model to capture the psychological tactics used by fraud perpetrators to influence the thoughts and decision-making processes of individuals. The PREY model operationalizes the tenets of social engineering and demonstrates how such tactics could be re-engineered to increase the effectiveness of fraud prevention within the financial literacy context.     

“Grandma never knit like this”: reclaiming older women’s knitting practices from discourses of new craft in Britain

ABSTRACT

New discourses of craft construct knitting as young, hip, socially networked and politically conscious and the experiences of knitters who do not fit into this formulation are marginalised. 7.3 million people in Britain knit; the vast majority are women in their mid-thirties and older. Yet popular media accounts of ‘new knitting’ mobilise the derogatory figure of the ‘grandma’ to repudiate knitters who are seen not to properly instantiate contemporary femininity. Although this derision accrues particularly to older women, knitters of all ages can be similarly dismissed. Knitting is thus a site of struggle around new formations of gender in post-feminist culture in which some women fall short. This study uses original qualitative data from focus groups with 15 adult knitters in North-west England and North Wales to give voice to women who do not identify with ‘new knitting’ practices and primarily pursue their hobby in more conventional contexts. The article finds that traditional domestic craft practices continue to play a significant role, particularly in older women’s leisure, and that ‘new knitting’ is alienating for some practitioners. While the article concludes that twenty-first century discourses of craft have devalued established knitting practices, it also indicates that these are useful sources of critique of hipster capitalist post-feminist culture.     

Optimal design and directional leverage with applications in differential equation models

We consider the problem of estimating input parameters for a differential equation model, given experimental observations of the output. As time and cost limit both the number and quality of observations, the design is critical. A generalized notion of leverage is derived and, with this, we define directional leverage. Effective designs are argued to be those that sample in regions of high directional leverage. We present an algorithm for finding optimal designs and then establish relationships to existing design optimality criteria. Numerical examples demonstrating the performance of the algorithm are presented.     

The Use of Postloss Financing of Catastrophic Risk

Catastrophic risk financing is a critical issue for many states. At the epicenter of the debate is the role of the state government in helping homeowners finance catastrophic storm risk. In general, states have used a variety of pre‐ and postloss strategies, including rate regulation, residual markets, guaranty funds, and postloss assessment structures. However, several states, including Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas have used strategies that involve potentially large postloss funding of hurricane risk. In some cases, the structure of the postloss financing mechanism is likely to create significant assessments and subsidies. This article examines the role of state government in catastrophe financing, focusing primarily on postloss financing methods. Specifically, the article provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the postloss catastrophe financing as well as the political forces that motivate the use of this approach. Further, given the potential magnitude of postloss assessments and related subsidies, we use the Florida homeowners market to illustrate the implications of the state's decisions. This allows for a concrete discussion of the impact and viability of postloss financing mechanisms.     

The Insurance Industry's Talent Gap and Where We Go From Here

There is concern among insurers and related firms in the United States and abroad that there will be a shortage of skilled insurance professionals in the next few years as current workers retire. Though there have been discussions among insurers, organizations, and academics as to how to address this issue, until recently, each group has been primarily working in isolation. The Insurance Education & Career Summit, which took place in September 2011, brought together 110 individuals across these groups for the purpose of creating a unified strategy to both attract and retain skilled workers to the insurance industry and work to create the next generation of insurance executives. This article provides a brief background on the talent gap issue. We also discuss its potential impact on the insurance industry. Finally, we summarize the main obstacles identified by Summit participants to both attracting and retaining skilled workers as well as the strategies developed to overcome these obstacles.     

Unionization and Productivity: Evidence from Charter Schools

This paper studies the relationship between teacher unionization and student achievement. Generally stable patterns of teacher unionization since the 1970s have historically presented challenges in measuring the effects of unionization on educational production. However, the blossoming of the charter school sector in recent decades provides fertile ground for study because while most charters are nonunion, teachers at some charters have unionized. Using a generalized difference‐in‐difference approach combining California union certification data with student achievement data from 2003–2012, we find that, aside from a one‐year dip in achievement associated with the unionization process itself, unionization does not affect student achievement.     

Identity motives in charitable giving: Explanations for charity preferences from a global donor survey

Millions of charities compete for donor dollars, yet why people prefer to give to particular charities remains poorly understood. Informed by the social identity approach, and using mixed methods, we analyzed open-ended responses from a global donor survey (N = 1,849 from 117 countries) to understand why participants see their favorite charity as important, and how identities influence charity preferences. Nine subthemes were generated under two overarching themes: Self and Other. Theme prevalence and charity category were not independent: donors were more likely to explain giving to religious and research charities in relation to the self, but to explain giving to social service, animal, or international charities in relation to the other. We also present an inventory of the identities that consumers use to inform their giving. Together, findings show the importance of identities in charitable giving and demonstrate how consumer motives depend on the cause or beneficiary.