Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine environmental factors as potential determinants of international migration. We distinguish between unexpected short-run factors, captured by natural disasters, as well as long-run climate change and climate variability. Building on a simple neo-classical model we use a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows for the period 1960-2000, the time and dyadic dimensions of which additionally allow us to control for numerous time-varying and time invariant factors. As a whole, we find little direct impact of climatic change on international migration in the medium to long run across our entire sample. Using the rate of urbanization as a proxy for internal migration we find strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.international migration, climate change, natural disasters, income maximization

Culture in international business research: a bibliometric study in four top IB journals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a study on the articles published in the four top international business (IB) journals to examine how four cultural models and concepts – Hofstede’s (1980), Hall’s (1976), Trompenaars’s (1993) and Project GLOBE’s (House et al., 2004) – have been used in the extant published IB research. National cultures and cultural differences provide a crucial component of the context of IB research. Design/methodology – This is a bibliometric study on the articles published in four IB journals over the period from 1976 to 2010, examining a sample of 517 articles using citations and co-citation matrices. Findings – Examining this sample revealed interesting patterns of the connections across the studies. Hofstede’s (1980) and House et al.’s (2004) research on the cultural dimensions are the most cited and hold ties to a large variety of IB research. These findings point to a number of research avenues to deepen the understanding on how firms may handle different national cultures in the geographies they operate. Research limitations – Two main limitations are faced, one associated to the bibliometric method, citations and co-citations analyses and other to the delimitation of our sample to only four IB journals, albeit top-ranked. Originality/value – The paper focuses on the main cultural models used in IB research permitting to better understand how culture has been used in IB research, over an extended period.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Climate change projections and public behaviour towards adopting integrated mitigation and adaptation approaches at a household level in urban areas, the eThekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Globally since the 1970s, the temperature has increased rapidly and remains unpredictable because of its accelerating pace (Thompson, 2010). This has increased the frequency and intensity of daily temperature, together with humidity and extreme heat waves. This has further resulted to increased heat-mortality and decreasing cold-related deaths; extreme flooding; droughts and/or extreme wildfires in some locations. Urban areas around the round are not free from such climate change impacts, and could be compounded with project climate change. Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to evaluate local climate projections against past, current and future trends and to evaluate public behaviour towards adopting integrated climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches at a household level in urban areas, in the eThekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. To achieve this aim of this study, temperature, precipitation, and humidity anomaly trends in the eThekwini Municipality from were 1957-2014 were evaluated. Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 8.5 W/m–2 radiative forcing from the Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG) was used to evaluate projected mean annual trends in maximum and minimum temperature, and precipitation. RCP 8.5 W/m–2 radiative forcing was also used to identify mean monthly anomaly trends for maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, hot days, dry spells and heat stress for the years 2016-2090. The radiative forcing of 8.5 W/m–2 is the projected future condition of extreme warming and predicts that mitigation alone will not change the circumstances of global warming and local climate change. The projections are based on an increasing population growth, the lowest rate in the development of technology, high poverty, and increasing emissions. The projected results reveal that the eThekwini Municipality will continue to undergo fluctuating trends in maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, and humidity and this will exacerbate future projected heat stress, heat spells, dry spells and hot days. The synergy between mitigation and adaptation is necessary to avoid the extreme impacts of climate change. The urban household sector is argued to drive climate change action and build adaptive capacity to risks that are unavoidable. To assess public behaviour towards adopting integrated climate change mitigation and adaptation approaches, 100 questionnaires were distributed to urban households in the eThekwini Municipality. Key informants from the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department (EPCPD) and South African Weather Service (SAWS) were also interviewed on various aspects of climate change. This was supplemented by focus group interviews with delegates from the Durban Adaptation Charter and Climate Reality Workshop, The assessment of public behaviour and responses towards adopting integrated mitigation and adaptation approaches at a household level in urban areas show that short-term curtailment measures overarch long-term efficient measures. Urban households have demonstrated some level of awareness towards climate change and its associated impacts. It was found that local perceptions and behavioural responses to mitigate and adapt to climate change was shaped by governmental institutions and their involvement within urban communities in the eThekwini Municipality. Transformational and integral theories hold significance in changing the old dynamics of incremental, business-as-usual approaches into a proactive integration of mitigation and adaptation. This is a new approach to understanding that the rate of climate change is progressing, and transformational change is required in national and regional policy, which can invoke change at a local level and change urban household perceptions and responses to climate change

(Un)caring communities: processes of marginalisation and access to formal and informal care and assistance in rural Russia

The marginality of rural life, understood in structural, economic, political and geographic terms, has been an underlying theme in both historical and contemporary studies of the Russian countryside. Much less attention has been paid to marginality as relational and the moral discourses of (un)belonging and (un)deservingness through which moral centres and peripheries are constructed within rural Russian contexts. This paper explores the ways in which both fixed, structural and constructed, personalised explanations of hardship are employed by rural people and how these relate to processes of integration into or exclusion from ‘caring’ and ‘moral’ communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Burla village, western Siberia, in 2008-10, and focusing primarily on the activities of the Centre for Social Assistance to Families and Children located there, the paper discusses the ways in which affiliation with the ‘moral centre’ facilitates access to both formal and informal forms of care and assistance from which those at the ‘moral periphery’ are more often excluded

Article 22 TEU and the Unnoticed Resurrection of the Failed Common Strategies

The old common strategies instrument was introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam in order to improve the coherence and effectiveness of EU external action. However, shortly after its introduction the instrument suffered an inglorious demise because it failed to provide any added value. It is therefore surprising that the Lisbon Treaty, rather unnoticed, holds on to this instrument in Article 22 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Yet, rather than a relic of the past, this move represents a deliberate endeavor to tackle the shortcomings of its predecessor. Despite its significant potential in the new external action constellation, Article 22 TEU has however not yet been used in practice, suggesting that its innovative constitutional design did in fact not reply to any pressing political needs

Astrophysical and Cosmological Constraints on Neutrino masses

We review some astrophysical and cosmological properties and implications of neutrino masses and mixing angles. These include: constraints based on the relic density of neutrinos, limits on their masses and lifetimes, BBN limits on mass parameters, neutrinos and supernovae, and neutrinos and high energy cosmic rays.Comment: 23 pages, latex, 9 eps figures, added reference

On-orbit deployment anamolies: What can be done?

Modern communications satellites rely heavily upon deployable appendage (i.e., solar arrays, communications antennas, etc.) to perform vital functions that enable the spacecraft to effectively conduct mission objectives. Communications and telemetry antennas provide the radio-frequency link between the spacecraft and the earth ground station, permitting data to be transmitted and received from the satellite. Solar arrays serve as the principle source of electrical energy to the satellite, and re-charge internal batteries during operation. However, since satellites cannot carry back-up systems, if a solar array fails to deploy, the mission is lost. The subject of on-orbit anomalies related to the deployment of spacecraft appendage, and possible causes of such failures are examined. Topics discussed include mechanical launch loading, on-orbit thermal and solar concerns, reliability of spacecraft pyrotechnics, and practical limitations of ground-based deployment testing. Of particular significance, the article features an in-depth look at the lessons learned from the successful recovery of the Telesat Canada Anik-E2 satellite in 1991

Women's experience of pregnancy when post-birth surgery is indicated : a phenomenological study

Background: Pregnant women who are told their unborn babies require postnatal surgery following the 20 week scan are likely to be distressed. There is a small body of research in this area that suggests pregnancy experience is fundamentally changed and that pregnancy expectations may play a part in that process but it is unclear how women come to terms with their news. Objectives: This study aimed to gain a detailed understanding of what pregnant women experienced when faced with this news by applying Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional model of stress and coping (TMSC) and expectancy theory against a backdrop of disruptions to the normal stages of pregnancy as identified by Raphael-Leff (2005).Method: Seven in-depth interviews were conducted with pregnant women whose unborn babies had been diagnosed with a surgical nonlethal structural abnormality following the 20 week anomaly scan.Results: Pregnant women's experiences had four super-ordinate themes: 'living with a changed pregnancy’, which represented living with the unknown and pre and post news pregnancy expectations; ‘an emotional journey’, which represented post news emotions experienced and concerns about the future; ‘coping’ which represented how women mediated their distress; ‘relationships with self, their baby and others’ which involved questioning ideas around motherhood and their baby's identity and how others influenced pregnancy experience.Discussion: Themes were discussed in relation to the TMSC and expectancy theory and explored emotions and appraisals and the interplay an uncertain prognosis had on pregnancy expectations alongside interactional influences from the environment

Constraints to Leverage and Market Correlation

High risk stocks tend to produce lower risk-adjusted returns than their lower risk counterparts. I take a novel look at leverage constraints as the primary driver of the anomaly, in exploring the impact of changing margin requirements on compensation for market correlation and volatility. Using a dataset from the US stock market between 1934 and 1974, I find that conditioned on volatility, correlation with the market reflects the additional risk investors seek to take on when access to additional leverage is hindered. On the other hand, higher volatility does not seem to play much of a role in investors adjusting for changing conditions for leverage. Additionally, I apply my results in the context of a Betting Against Correlation factor and find the returns to be largely related to leverage constraints as predicted by previous research