Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).     

Migration,Ethnicity and Solidarity: ‘Multinational Workers’ in the Former Soviet Union

We investigate migrant construction workers’ experiences in the Former Soviet Union, examining their attitudes to other ethno-national groups, unions and collective action. Industrial relations and migration studies view migrant workers’ hypermobility and diversity, under conditions of low union coverage and rising nationalism, as potentially obstructing consciousness-raising and mobilizing. Workers in our study faced union indifference, ethno-national segregation and discrimination. However, managerial abuses, informality and contestation from below led to spontaneous mobilization. Lack of institutional channels to solve these disputes drove workers’ further mobility. Complex mobility trajectories and collective action translated into increased awareness of collective interests and rejection of nationalist ideologies. The outcome is ‘multinational workers’ potentially resistant to nation-state politics and capital's logics but also aware of the value and usefulness of collective solidarities. Thus, previous arguments solely associating exit with individualistic attitudes, and post-socialist legacies with workers’ quiescence present only partial pictures.     

Information flows and crashes in dynamic social networks

We develop a dynamic model of information transmission and aggregation in social networks in which continued membership in the network is contingent on the accuracy of opinions. Agents have opinions about a state of the world and form links to others in a directed fashion probabilistically. Agents update their opinions by averaging those of their connections, weighted by how long their connections have been in the system. Agents survive or die based on how far their opinions are from the true state. In contrast to the results in the extant literature on DeGroot learning, we show through simulations that for some parameterizations the model cycles stochastically between periods of high connectivity, in which agents arrive at a consensus opinion close to the state, and periods of low connectivity, in which agents’ opinions are widely dispersed.

     

Analytical approximations of local‐Heston volatility model and error analysis

This paper studies the expansion of an option price (with bounded Lipschitz payoff) in a stochastic volatility model including a local volatility component. The stochastic volatility is a square root process, which is widely used for modeling the behavior of the variance process (Heston model). The local volatility part is of general form, requiring only appropriate growth and boundedness assumptions. We rigorously establish tight error estimates of our expansions, using Malliavin calculus. The error analysis, which requires a careful treatment because of the lack of weak differentiability of the model, is interesting on its own. Moreover, in the particular case of call–put options, we also provide expansions of the Black–Scholes implied volatility that allow to obtain very simple formulas that are fast to compute compared to the Monte Carlo approach and maintain a very competitive accuracy.     

PITFALLS IN CROSS‐SECTION STUDIES WITH INTEGRATED REGRESSORS: A SURVEY AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS

In cross‐section studies, if the dependent variable is I(0) but the regressor is I(1), the true slope must be zero in the resulting “unbalanced regression.” A spuriously significant relationship may be found in large cross‐sections, however, if the integrated regressor is related to a stationary variable that enters the DGP but is omitted from the regression. The solution is to search for the related stationary variable, in some cases the first difference of the integrated regressor, in other cases, a categorical variable that can take on limited number of values which depend on the integrated variable. We present an extensive survey, new developments, and applications particularly in finance.     

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

We tested relationships between employee quit rates and two bundles of human resource (HR) practices that reflect the different interests of the two parties involved in the employment relationship. To understand the boundary conditions for these effects, we examined an external contingency proposed to influence the exchange-based effects of HR practices on subsequent quit rates – the local industry-specific unemployment rate – and an internal contingency proposed to shape employees’ conceptualization of their exchange relationship – their employment status (i.e. full-time, part-time and temporary employment). Analyses of lagged data from over 200 Canadian establishments show that inducement HR practices (e.g. extensive benefits) and performance expectation HR practices (e.g. performance-based bonuses) had different effects on quit rates, and the former effect was moderated by unemployment rate. The effects of HR practices on quit rates did not differ between FT and PT employees, but a different pattern of main and interactive effects was found among temporary workers. These findings suggest that employees’ exchange-based decisions to leave may be less affected by the number of hours they expect to work each week, and more by the number of weeks they expect to work.     

Climate for conflict management,exposure to workplace bullying and work engagement: a moderated mediation analysis

The present study investigates a potential preventive factor in relation to workplace bullying. Specifically, we examine how climate for conflict management (CCM) may be related to less bullying, increased work engagement, as well as whether CCM is a moderator in the bullying engagement relationship. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey among employees in a transport company (N = 312). Hypotheses were tested simultaneously in a moderated mediation analysis which showed that bullying and job engagement were related (H1), CCM was related to less reports of bullying (H2), CCM was related to work engagement (H3) and that CCM was indirectly related to job engagement through bullying (H4), but only when CCM was weak (H5). That is, CCM moderated the relationship between bullying and work engagement in that this relationship only existed when CCM was low. The present study contributes to theory within this research field by showing that organizational measures may not only prevent bullying, but may also affect how employees react when subjected to bullying. Furthermore, the effect of climate in relation to bullying may be down to the narrow bandwidth facet of CCM. The study informs employers how they may act to prevent bullying while also reducing the potential negative outcomes of those cases of bullying that inevitably will show up from time to time.