Crime, unemployment and labor market programs in turbulent times

We exploit the exceptional variation in municipality-level unemployment and spending on labor market programs in Sweden during the 1990s to identify the impact of unemployment and programs on crime. We identify a statistically significant effect of unemployment on the incidence of overall crime, burglary, auto-theft and drug possession. A calculation suggests that the sharp reduction in unemployment during the later 1990s may have reduced burglary and auto-theft with 15 and 20 percent, respectively. After addressing several specification issues, we conclude that there is at best weak evidence that labor market programs – general ones and those specifically targeted to the young – help to reduce crime.Crime; unemployment; labor market programs; panel data

Crime, Unemployment and Labor Market Programs in Turbulent Times

We exploit the exceptional variation in municipality-level unemployment and spending on labor market programs in Sweden during the 1990s to identify the impact of unemployment and programs on crime. We identify a statistically significant effect of unemployment on the incidence of overall crime, burglary, auto-theft and drug possession. A calculation suggests that the sharp reduction in unemployment during the later 1990s may have reduced burglary and auto-theft with 15 and 20 percent, respectively. After addressing several specification issues, we conclude that there is at best weak evidence that labor market programs ­ general ones and those specifically targeted to the young ­ help to reduce crime.crime; unemployment; labor market programs; panel data

Conflicting Intuitions about Ethical Investment: A Survey among Individual Investors

This present paper relates the results of an exploratory survey distributed among individuals invested in so-called ethical (or socially responsible) mutual funds, and attempts to develop a better understanding of these individuals’ ethical beliefs – especially concerning whether, or why, they think that the practices of contemporary ethical funds indeed are ethical. Survey questions were informed by the contemporary philosophical literature pertaining to the ethics of investing and designed to elicit the respondents’ basic intuitions about the ethics of different investment strategies. Our results indicate that respondents show considerable support for both a moral purity perspective and a moral effectiveness perspective, and they seem to find it difficult to choose between these perspectives. Indeed, we find that this is not just a conflict between different groups of investors with different moral outlooks, but many individuals themselves seem to be struggling with conflicting ethical intuitions. We argue that these results are incompatible with the idea that ethical investors refrain from thinking systematically about ethics simply in order to be able to get away with also investing in non-ethical funds. A more probable explanation is developed building on the contemporary psychological literature concerning intuitions in ethics.no; keywords

Bundle adjustment using single-track vehicle model

This paper describes a method for estimating the 6-DoF viewing parameters of a calibrated vehicle-mounted camera. Visual features are combined with standard in-vehicle sensors and a single-track vehicle motion model in a bundle adjustment framework to produce a jointly optimal viewing parameter estimate. Results show that the vehicle motion model in combination with in-vehicle sensors exhibit good accuracy in estimating planar vehicle motion. This property is preserved, when combining these information sources with vision. Furthermore, the accuracy obtained from vision-only in direction estimation is not only maintained, but in fact further improved, primarily in situations where the matched visual features are few

Position Representation of Effective Electron-Electron Interactions in Solids

An essential ingredient in many model Hamiltonians, such as the Hubbard model, is the effective electron-electron interaction $U$, which enters as matrix elements in some localized basis. These matrix elements provide the necessary information in the model, but the localized basis is incomplete for describing $U$. We present a systematic scheme for computing the manifestly basis-independent dynamical interaction in position representation, $U({\bf r},{\bf r}';\omega)$, and its Fourier transform to time domain, $U({\bf r},{\bf r}';\tau)$. These functions can serve as an unbiased tool for the construction of model Hamiltonians. For illustration we apply the scheme within the constrained random-phase approximation to the cuprate parent compounds La$_2$CuO$_4$ and HgBa$_2$CuO$_4$ within the commonly used 1- and 3-band models, and to non-superconducting SrVO$_{3}$ within the $t_{2g}$ model. Our method is used to investigate the shape and strength of screening channels in the compounds. We show that the O 2$p_{x,y}-$Cu 3$d_{x^2-y^2}$ screening gives rise to regions with strong attractive static interaction in the minimal (1-band) model in both cuprates. On the other hand, in the minimal ($t_{2g}$) model of SrVO$_3$ only regions with a minute attractive interaction are found. The temporal interaction exhibits generic damped oscillations in all compounds, and its time-integral is shown to be the potential caused by inserting a frozen point charge at $\tau=0$. When studying the latter within the three-band model for the cuprates, short time intervals are found to produce a negative potential.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure

Уметност, култура и музичко образование

Целта на трудот е да се поттикнат пошироки размислувања со кои ќе се дефинираат причините за слабостите на музичкото образование. Имплементацијата на реформите во образовниот систем во Р. Македонија претставува реален ризик за згаснување на овој предмет кој тесно е поврзан со уметноста и културата

The Austrian Carbon Database (ACDb) Study - Overview [Revised 28 October 2003]

This is the final overview report of the Austrian Carbon Database (ACDb) Study, which pursues three main objectives: (1) to support the Austrian Carbon Balance Model (ACBM) II; (2) to internationalize the Austrian carbon analysis and to place Austrias carbon accounting within an international science and policy context focusing on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC); and (3) to provide good practice guidance in consideration of Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) rather than Partial Carbon Accounting (PCA). The Study is divided into two phases, a deductive and an inductive research phase. The deductive research phase builds upon the theoretical insights gained during the ACDb Study and addresses Objective 2 (Internationalization). The inductive research phase builds upon the generalized experiences from working with uncertainties in building the ACDb and addresses Objectives 1 (ACBM II Support) and 3 (Good Practice Guidance). The ACDb is a carbon consistent database for Austria that acknowledges FCA. It focuses on publicly available, including measured, data around 1990 and attributes special importance to the direct and transparent understanding of both first (mean values) and second statistical moments (uncertainties). The ACDb does not replace existing, officially agreed and widely accepted, Austrian databases but provides a thematically less detailed, however, carbon consistent standard that allows to quantify the uncertainties underlying these databases when using them in a wider (Austrian-integrated) context than traditionally done. The focus of the Study is on conclusions that are generally valid and are not only specific for Austria. Based on our deductive and inductive research, we conclude that the Kyoto Protocol and the way national emissions are inventoried urgently need fundamental as well as methodological improvements, more than ever before

Determinants of customer satisfaction with socially responsible investments: Do ethical and environmental factors impact customer satisfaction with SRI profiled mutual funds?

Although much research has been published on green/ethical consumer behaviour, the question of how consumers evaluate pro-socially positioned products in the post-purchase stage is still virtually unexplored. This is troubling given the significance of post-purchase evaluations within general marketing theory. To address this gap in the literature, this study examines how a set of technical and functional quality attributes contribute to customer satisfaction in a socially responsible investment (SRI) setting. The results of the study show that perceived financial quality of the SRI mutual fund is the most important predictor of customer satisfaction. However, perceived social, ethical, and environmental (SEE) quality is also positively related to satisfaction for the SRI mutual fund. Based on these results, it is argued that although SEE quality is important to customers, marketers of pro-socially profiled products should primarily focus on conventional quality attributes, as a good SEE record unlikely to generate customer satisfaction alone.Customer satisfaction; ethics; perceived quality; socially responsible investment; mutual funds

Entrepreneurship in Artistic Vocations to Maintain a Preferred Lifestyle

The authors of this thesis have conducted a qualitative study on four artists situated in the countryside of Österlen in Sweden and being participating members of the Österlen Art Circuit. The theories of lifestyle entrepreneurship and extreme entrepreneurship have been applied as an interpretive framework to gain an understanding of the motivation for this specific group of small business owners. Thus, the motivation to maintain an artistic business is linked to a preferred lifestyle by means of this interpretive framework. Previous studies have established the difficulties for small business owners to receive external financing and how they subsequently turn to various internal methods to salvage capital, labeled as bootstrapping. Subsequently, the theory of bootstrapping has been applied in this thesis to interpret how the artists finance their lifestyle and small businesses. How small business owners utilize bootstrapping methods has been researched previously, but research is lacking into the motivation for why small business owners engage in bootstrapping. This thesis contributes to the understanding of motivation for small business owners and bootstrapping by linking the motivation to the wish of maintaining a preferred lifestyle. The results of the study in the thesis indicate that the motivation for the artists is an intertwinement of their private life and working life. They use their own house as the base for all their artistic ventures and have no strict work hours, thus they could work with their artistic venture at just about any time they wish and contributing to notions of freedom. The environment around the artists both in private life and working life serves as an inspiration for their ventures. This lack of boundary between working life and private life is the motivation for the artists’ and manifests in a certain lifestyle making the theory of lifestyle entrepreneurship applicable. The artists’ furthermore indicates a disregard for selling as much goods as possible and thus opposes the prevailing norms in society for businesses where the amount of sales is at the forefront. Consequently, the artists also show a streak of being extreme entrepreneurs. The methods utilized for maintaining the lifestyle of the artists and their small businesses indicates a correspondence to a number of methods for bootstrapping, mainly conforming to owner-financing bootstrapping and subsidy-bootstrapping

Do Entrenched Manager Pay Their Workers More?

We present evidence on whether managerial entrenchment affects workers' pay, using a large panel dataset that matches public firms with detailed data on their subsidiaries and workers. We find that CEOs with a stronger grip on control pay their workers higher wages, but CEO ownership of cash flow rights mitigates such behavior. Unionized workers and executives are found to get a larger share of the higher pay. These findings do not seem to be driven by productivity differences or reverse causality, and are robust to a series of robustness checks. Our evidence is consistent with an agency model in which entrenched managers pay higher wages because they come with direct private benefits for the manager, such as lower-effort wage bargaining and better CEO-employee relations, and suggests more broadly an important link between the corporate governance of large public firms and labor market outcomes.Corporate governance; agency problems; private benefits; matched employer-employee data; wages