Are devaluations contractionary in emerging economies of Eastern Europe?

In most developing countries currency depreciation is said to be contractionary. This is because depreciation reduces the aggregate supply more than it increases the aggregate demand. However, emerging European economies have received no attention so far, mostly due to unavailability of data. Now that enough time-series data are available, we try to fill the gap by investigating the impact of real depreciation in effective exchange rates of Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Slovak Republic on their domestic output. We find that in the short run real depreciation is expansionary in Belarus, Latvia, Poland, and Slovak Republic; contractionary in Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Russia; and has no effect in Lithuania. In almost none of the countries, the short-run effects last into the long run.

Are oral examinations objective? Evidence from the hiring process for judges in Greece

Oral examinations are a fairly common way of evaluating candidates in professional certification settings. This paper explores the objectivity of the process followed for hiring judges in Greece, with an emphasis on the effect of gender on the hiring decision. Using data for the years 2008–2014, I find statistically significant and robust evidence of female candidates performing slightly worse than male candidates in the oral examination. The mechanism that explains this difference (discrimination, difference in skills, etc.) is not clear. Nevertheless, this result stresses the importance of applying enhanced meritocratic safeguards to oral examinations, especially when a career as a judge is at stake.     

Perpetrator programmes for partner violence: Are they based on ideology or evidence?

Purpose. The ideologically based view of intimate partner violence has traditionally influenced policy and practice in modern western nations and dominated cross‐national research and practice. This review considers the validity of the position statement of a British organization responsible for accrediting many male perpetrator programmes in the statutory, voluntary, and private sector as an example of this ideological influence. Method. The position statement, informed by the patriarchal view of partner violence, is evaluated using empirical evidence from various branches of the social sciences, including psychology, that have not been guided by the patriarchal view. Results. Overwhelming empirical evidence is presented, which refutes ideologically driven assumptions that have been put forward to guide current practice and evaluation of it. Conclusions. This review highlights the need to investigate intimate partner violence from a scientific and gender‐inclusive perspective. The implications for psychological practice are discussed.     

Mental health specialized probation caseloads: Are they effective?

With the large and growing number of persons with mental illnesses under probation supervision, a form of specialized probation called specialized mental health caseload (SMHC) has been implemented. This study explores the effectiveness of a prototypic SMHC implemented statewide. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare criminal justice, mental health, and community engagement outcomes among three caseloads: a newly established SMHC supervising no more than 30 clients per officer (N = 1367); an established SMHC supervising roughly 50 clients per officer (N = 495); and a traditional caseload of clients receiving mental health treatment and supervised by officers with average caseloads of over 130 clients (N = 5453). Using a mixed methods approach, we found that the SMHC was implemented with high adherence to fidelity, and comparisons based on different caseload samples generally support the effectiveness of the specialized mental health caseload, particularly on criminal justice outcomes. Future studies using random assignment are needed to examine the connection among mental health symptoms, compliance with treatment and probation supervision, and recidivism.     

University mission and academic freedom: Are they irreconcilable?

Educational freedom, rightly understood, depends upon the freedom to shape - and (for individuals) to choose to study in or teach in - distinctive educational institutions. This implies an obligation upon faculty who have chosen to commit themselves to such an institution to teach in a way that engages positively with its educational project. Policies which provide scope and encouragement for schools and universities to represent distinctive and coherent viewpoints are an essential condition of educational freedom in a pluralistic society. These issues are discussed with reference to the ‘values project‘ of Free University in Amsterdam and to debates, in the Netherlands and the United States, over the distinctive character of schools. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Public Charitable Collections: Are they a Worthwhile Cause?

This article examines one of the most long-established methods of fund-raising for charitable causes in the UK – public charitable collections – and looks at changing patterns in this method of fund-raising in recent years. There have been changes both in the method of collection, which now extends beyond cash donations collected by unpaid volunteers to direct debits and credit card donations collected by paid collectors, and also in the chosen locations for collections, with a preference for supermarkets and other off-street sites. These changes have brought with them difficulties in the regulation of such collections. The article gives a brief overview of current legislative provisions in the UK and the proposed new measures for England and Wales. It examines some of the practical problems involved with the implementation of legislative provisions, and considers some alternative ways of combating potential fraud.     

Innovation practices in emerging economies: Do university partnerships matter?

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Enterprises’ resources and capabilities determine their ability to achieve competitive advantage. In this regard, the key innovation challenges that...     

Digital behavioral-fingerprint for user attribution in digital forensics: Are we there yet?

the need for a reliable and complementary identifier mechanism in a digital forensic analysis is the focus of this study. Mouse dynamics have been applied in information security studies, particularly, continuous authentication and authorization. However, the method applied in security is void of specific behavioral signature of a user, which inhibits its applicability in digital forensic science. This study investigated the likelihood of the observation of a unique signature from mouse dynamics of a computer user. An initial mouse path model was developed using non-finite automata. Thereafter, a set-theory based adaptive two-stage hash function and a multi-stage rule-based semantic algorithm were developed to observe the feasibility of a unique signature for forensic usage. An experimental process which comprises three existing mouse dynamics datasets were used to evaluate the applicability of the developed mechanism. The result showed a low likelihood of extracting unique behavioral signature which can be used in a user attribution process. Whilst digital forensic readiness mechanism could be a potential approach that can be used to achieve a reliable behavioral biometrics modality, the lack of unique signature presents a limitation. In addition, the result supports the logic that the current state of behavioral biometric modality, particularly mouse dynamics, is not suitable for forensic usage. Hence, the study concluded that whilst mouse dynamics-based behavioral biometrics may be a complementary modality in security studies, more will be required to adopt it as a forensic modality in litigation. Furthermore, the result from this study finds relevance in other human attributional studies such as user identification in recommender systems, e-commerce, and online profiling systems, where the degree of accuracy is not relatively high.     

Young People as Objects of Police Control in a Nordic Context: Who Are the Socially Visible Targets?

In Finland, more than one in four young females and almost one in three young males experienced some type of adversarial police contact in a year. The high prevalence of adversarial police contact among contemporary youth highlights the need to study the nature of the contacts and labelling theory’s hypothesis of control bias. Consequently, we develop the theory’s concept of social visibility to examine differential selection. We draw on a nationally representative youth survey to explore police contacts among youths aged 15 to 16 (N?=?5826). The open-ended responses suggested that police interventions typically focus on traffic situations or use of alcohol in public places. Also, we used multivariate logistic regression to examine which factors increase the likelihood of adversarial police contact. We found that a variety of delinquency and heavy alcohol use emerge as strong triggers of getting caught by the police. In addition, male gender, living in a city, having a single father, and low educational aspirations increases the likelihood of police contact, controlling for delinquency, and socio-demographic variables. Our findings seem to be consistent with mixed-model hypothesis, which highlights that both, differential involvement and selection, might operate together. We suggest that even in the Nordic conditions, which is characterised by high social equality, social biases seem to exist and some youth are more socially visible to formal social control than others.     

Religiosity and violence: Are they related after considering the strongest predictors?

The present study was designed to examine the significance of religiosity and of church attendance after considering the effects on violence of sociodemographic variables and elements of control, strain, and social learning theories. The sample was comprised of inmates, aged fifteen to forty-seven years, at the only boot camp for adults in Arkansas.Logistic regression procedures indicated that religiosity, and not church attendance, maintained a significant inverse relationship to violence after other study factors were held constant. Implications of these findings were discussed.     

When Are Local Incumbents Held Accountable for Government Performance? Evidence from US School Districts

Do voters hold local officials accountable for government performance? Using over a decade of panel data on school district elections and academic achievement in California, I causally identify the effect of test score changes on school board incumbent re‐election rates and show that incumbents are more likely to win re‐election when test scores improve in their districts—but only in presidential election years. This effect disappears in midterm and off‐years, indicating that election timing might facilitate local government accountability.     

What really matters for TTOs efficiency? An analysis of TTOs in developed and developing economies

The Journal of Technology Transfer - The university’s role in reaping the benefits from research by transforming knowledge and technology into commercially usable forms is becoming...     

Financial constraints to investing in intangibles: Do innovative and non-innovative firms differ?

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper investigates the extent to which financial constraints on investments in intangible activities differ with respect to the kind of intangible and to...     

Structural changes in Central and Eastern European economies: breaking news or breaking the ice?

This paper extends the sparse existing literature on structural breaks in emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe by analyzing structural breaks in the intercept, trend and variance of monthly key macroeconomic variables, such as industrial production, inflation, monetary aggregates, nominal exchange rates and series related to the labor market. Using the Bayesian procedure developed by Wang and Zivot (2000, A Bayesian time series model of multiple structural changes in level, trend and variance. J Busi Econom 18:374–386), we provide strong evidence in favor of multiple structural breaks in the series under study. As most of the existing empirical literature on European emerging markets does not sufficiently deal with structural breaks, the instability found in this paper has important implications for macro-econometric modeling as well as the ensuing recommendations for economic policy.     

‘Are the ‘others’ coming?’: Evidence on ‘alien conspiracy’ from three illegal markets in Greece

In the early 1990s Greece accepted a large number of immigrants from a variety of contexts. Since then ‘organised criminality’ has become an important aspect of the immigration nexus in the country, and ethnicity has been viewed as an extremely important-if not the primary–explanatory variable. Simultaneously, there has been very little empirical research on ‘organised crime’ in Greece in general and ‘organised crime’ and ethnicity in particular. The purpose of this article, which is based on previous research that the author has conducted on three illegal markets in Greece (a. migrant smuggling business, b. the cigarette black market, and c. the market of stolen cars and car parts), is to show the extent to which these illegal markets are controlled by foreign nationals, and establish whether there is such thing as an ‘alien conspiracy’ in the particular country.     

Are data protection laws sufficient for privacy intrusions? The case in Hong Kong

An area of concern which relates to privacy intrusions in Hong Kong is the substantial changes that have taken place in recent years in relation to news gathering and reporting and the activities of local paparazzi. The issue that needs to be addressed is how intrusions of privacy can be protected in Hong Kong. The most significant reform to date has been the enactment of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance which provides rules for the fair handling of information about living individuals. However, the Ordinance is concerned only with data protection and does not provide a general privacy right. This article demonstrates the inadequacies of existing legislation for general privacy protection and examines the possibility of developing a separate action for general privacy via a) an action of extended breach of confidence as demonstrated by the UK model and b) a sui generis cause of action as can be seen in the New Zealand courts.