Emotional and cognitive changes during and post a near fatal heart attack and one-year after: A case study

This case study reports on changes in emotions before and during an unexpected heart rate in a young, apparently healthy male with a life-long history of exercise in the absence of family history of heart problems. He completed the Brunel Mood Scale (Terry et al., 2003) to assess emotions before, during, and after the heart attack, and also describing his thoughts during these periods. Results indicate he experienced unpleasant emotions in the build up to the heart attack, feelings he attributed at the time to frustration to achieve fitness goals. He maintained an exercise regime prior to having a heart attack, a finding consistent with previous research suggesting that early diagnosis, although vital for survival, is not likely to be identified among seemingly healthy individuals. During the heart attack, he experienced a rapid emotional change characterised by a rapid increase in anger coupled with thoughts of needing to survive. The intensity of emotions and regulation strategies employed before and during the heart attack provide insight this experience, and we suggest future research should investigate emotional change during adverse conditions

The stewardship of things: Property and responsibility in the management of manufactured goods

In the context of broad-based concerns about the need to move towards a more sustainable materials economy, particularly as they are expressed in debates around ecological modernisation (EM), we argue that product stewardship has radical potential as a means to promote significant change in the relationship between society and the material world. We focus on two important dimensions that have been neglected in approaches to product stewardship to date. Firstly, we argue that immanent within the basic concept of stewardship is a problematisation of dominant understandings of property ownership in neoliberal market economies. In the space opened up by notions of stewardship, different ways of enacting both rights and responsibilities to products and materials emerge which have potential to advance the sustainability of material economies. Secondly, through exploration of existing expressions of product stewardship, we uncover a neglected scale of action. Both policy and dominant articulations of EM focus primarily on the efficiency of production processes; and secondarily, the attitudes and behaviours of individual consumers. Missing from this is the 'meso-scale' of social collectives including households, neighbourhoods, more distributed communities and small scale social enterprises. Based on a review of existing research from Australia and the UK, including our own, we argue that understanding of embedded practices of material responsibility at the household scale can both reinvigorate the concept of product stewardship as a potentially radical intervention, and reveal the potential of the meso-scale as a challenging but worthwhile realm of policy intervention

Global Bond Portfolios and EMU

We examine the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. We find considerable support for âeuro area bias”: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking pattern is the positive connection between trade linkages and financial linkages in explaining asymmetries across EMU member countries in terms of their outward and inward bond investments vis-a-vis external counterparties. At the aggregate level, it is those countries physically closest to the euro area that are both the most important destinations and sources for external bond investment vis-a-vis the euro area. Our empirical results support the notion that financial regionalization is the leading force underlying financial globalization.

Global Bond Portfolios and EMU

We examine the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. We find considerable support for "euro area" bias: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking pattern is the positive connection between trade linkages and financial linkages in explaining asymmetries across EMU member countries in terms of their outward bond investments vis-a-vis external counterparties. Our empirical results underline the impact of currency union on financial integration and support the notion that financial regionalization is the leading force underlying financial globalization.

The Macroeconomics of International Financial Trade

A driving factor in any open-economy macroeconomics model is the degree of international financial integration.  This suggests that understanding the sources of the recent explosive growth in cross-border asset trade and the impact of the upscaling in gross and net international investment positions on key open-economy macroeconomic variables such as the trade balance and the real exchange rate is critically important for policy analysis.  Accordingly, the goal of this paper is to highlight some of the main results emerging from this fast-expanding research field.

The International Community and the CIS-7

The international community has sought to assist the development efforts of the CIS-7 countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The international financial institutions have played a leading role in these efforts. Despite considerable engagement with the governments of these countries, overall progress has been disappointing. In this paper, we review the contribution of the international community to the transition challenge facing the CIS-7 countries and assess whether a change in strategy is warranted.CIS7, international financial institutions, policy reform, external debt