Maastricht University - Open Journals
Not a member yet
451 research outputs found
Sort by
Late-Life Depression & Alzheimer\u27s Disease: A Proposal For The Bi-directional Threshold Model
Get PDFUntil now, the relationships between late-life depression and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and vice versa have only been investigated in terms of one-directional relationships. However, due to the central neuropathological mechanisms underlying both diseases, it is proposed that the interaction is bi-directional. These mechanisms include the stress-response hypothesis, amyloid hypothesis, inflammatory hypothesis, and genetic hypothesis. By reviewing these shared underlying mechanisms, as well as investigating the evidence for both one-directional relationships, a new model is proposed, namely the bi-directional threshold model. Whereas previous research only focused on one-directional interaction, this model is novel in accounting for the bi-directional interaction between AD and late-life depression. Thereby the model contributes to the literature on late-life depression and AD by serving as a starting point for further research. A better understanding of this new model could have major implications in ameliorating the course of both clinical conditions
Reputation, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Financial Performance of Banks
Get PDFThis paper investigates the effects of reputation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the financial performance of a global sample of banks. Firstly, reputation and CSR are found to be complements rather than substitutes. Reputation is found to increase return on equity, return on invested capital, and return on assets. CSR is found to be positively related to the above, as well as net interest income. Its relationship with the share price remains unclear. These relations are more pronounced for less reputable and less socially responsible banks, indicating a curvilinear relationship. It is further argued that investing in CSR poses a better opportunity for extracting economic value than reputation. The findings suggest that profits are earned on CSR and reputation, and thereby provide continued incentives for banks to maintain their status
Introduction
Get PDFTransparency is hard to pin down. It can be the condition of a substance or a physical object, a goal, or an everyday practice of private or public persons, companies, organizations and institutions (e.g. Bessire, 2006; Hansen, Christensen, & Flyverborn, 2015). People and the ways in which they determine and shape directions of transparency – being made transparent and making transparent – are the foci of this volume’s eight contributions. The first five contributions can be related to upwards transparency in that they discuss different situations in which people are made transparent. The last three contributions follow the downwards transparency perspective in that they discuss how institutions and organizations can, or cannot, be transparent for people and how people themselves may demand more transparency.
Regime Change and Public Protest in Poland: Comparing Past and Present
Get PDFPoland is currently facing a political regime change that erodes the country’s democratic structures and undermines its judicial system. Resembling the Polish dissident movements that accompanied the transition from a socialist-led to a democratic state in the late 1980s, protest movements are recently emerging that aim to counter the illiberal tendencies of Poland’s contemporary government. Civil society groups seem to accompany different types of regime change, either supporting the establishment of a democracy or fighting its disruption, making them a valuable indicator for the direction of political change. This chapter examines the relation between public protest and regime change based on a comparative case study of Poland. The findings indicate that the form of public protest gives insight into the type of political agitation. Civil society guiding a regime transition towards democracy acts from outside a country’s political structures and targets the inside. A regime change that distances a country from a democratic set-up is marked by public protests that operate from within the state’s structures, using the persistent democratic framework. Comparing the post-communist and today’s stage of political upheaval in Poland thus reveals general patterns on the interaction between the public and the political sphere during a regime transformation process. 
School Choice: An analysis of the strategic behaviour of students and schools in the student high-school allocation problem
Get PDFWe investigate how the one-to-one deferred acceptance algorithm can be used to solve the many-to-one school choice problem. In the first part of the paper we derive the important properties of the one-to-one Deferred Acceptance algorithm. In the second part of the paper, we consider the Deferred Acceptance algorithm for solving the many-to-one school choice problem. Using insights from the first two parts of the paper we show that the Deferred Acceptance algorithm is strategy proof for students, and manipulable by schools under specific conditions
Chinese public investment in Ecuador– an analysis of the motivational framework for Chinese state financing in the Latin American context
Get PDF The paper examines the underlying determinants of Chinese foreign finance allocation in Latin America and outlines the implications of these dynamics for receiver countries in the region. A case study on Ecuador is used in order to enrich the analysis with detail on country-level. Underlying drivers for aid allocation cannot be identified from the statistical analysis. However, the results do not lend support to the popular hypotheses of resource-driven or power-driven Chinese aid allocation either. In terms of less concessional financing, natural resource endowment results as the driving factor for Chinese fund allocation while the findings suggest that the country’s risk profile and investment environment play a minor role in Chinese public financing.
Toward a Surveillance Society? Issues of Privacy and Surveillance in the Bundestag Debates
No full textThis study has analysed the frames related to privacy and surveillance in the Bundestag debates in the period between 2014-2017. By performing the inductive framing analysis of the Parliamentary protocols this research identified three privacy and three surveillance frames. The analysis has shown what frames are used by the grand coalition, which has the most influence on the legislative outcome, as well as the opposition in the Bundestag. As a result, it revealed the goals German politicians pursue in relation to privacy and surveillance. One of the main findings is that privacy is discussed less often than surveillance, and is mainly presented as personal data. The dominant privacy frame discusses privacy as threatened by the flawed technologies and unsecure data sharing practices. Another important finding is that the grand coalition considers freedoms and security as conflicting rights that should be brought into balance. As evidence of this approach, one of the surveillance frames interprets surveillance as a democratic response to security issues. However, the dominant surveillance frame portrays surveillance as an excessive practice of national secret services. The most important is that this study has identified the shift how politicians portray surveillance. In the beginning of 2014, due to Snowden’s revelations about the USA’s global surveillance practices, surveillance was intensively discussed as an anti-democratic practice of foreign secret services. However, after the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, Bundestag members present surveillance as an acceptable democratic tool to ensure security and prevent terrorism.
Conclusion
Get PDFTransparency is hard to pin down. While it can be a condition as well as a means and social end, it is the people determining who and what is transparent in which way and why. While this volume’s eight contributions reflect different approaches towards analyzing and discussing different directions of transparency, they overall demonstrate that the phenomenon of transparency is and remains an inexhaustible and highly relevant domain for research
Postmodernist Relativism: A Return to Polytheism?
No full textDespite distancing themselves from traditional religions, (Western) post-secular societies are still heavily concerned with ‘spirituality’ and other forms of self-realisation. Within our working postmodernist framework, where ‘truth’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘God’ are found to be relative, this concern often translates into a combination of religiously inspired practices – such as (Hinduist) yoga or (Buddhist) meditation – and a scientific, modern approach to the knowledge of the world. Can this coexistence of practices be a new kind of polytheism? This paper shows that postmodernist, relativistic belief systems share the poly-, or multiplicity of approaches to life and reality, but not the -theist, or conceptualisation of their beliefs as ‘divine’
Women Working Emotions - Emotional Labour in Heterosexual Relationships
No full textThis research explores how young women experience emotional labour in heterosexual relationships. It does so against the background of three main interconnected concepts, namely those of power, gender and emotion. Thereby, subtle ways are uncovered in which women reproduce gender stereotypes in their intimate personal relationships on a daily basis. The results include that, in the private sphere, women still feel accountable for the emotional care work usually associated with the traditional female role of motherhood. Specifically, they seem to engage in a conscious process of internal, as well as, external emotional management. However, the effort undertaken by women to supervise the emotional climate of their relationships, as well as, their own feelings, was also found to be reciprocal in some cases, showing that there are complex ways in which young, modern couples resist gendered power