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Work from Home Suitability and Credit Risk Assessment
Get PDFEmploying firm-level work from home (WFH) suitability derived from the U.S. universe job postings, we investigate whether rating agencies and debt holders incorporate WFH suitability in their risk assessments. We document that firms with higher WFH suitability have higher credit ratings and lower costs of debt. Our results are robust to different fixed effect estimations, sampling methods, and controls. We identify two ways that WFH suitability translates into higher credit ratings: high WFH suitability is associated with lower future cash flow volatility and lower default risk. Overall, our study suggests that WFH suitability is an important determinant of credit risk assessments and that firms should see flexible work arrangements as an effective strategy in their crisis management planning.</p
The connection between sleep problems and emotional and behavioural difficulties in autistic children:a network analysis
Get PDFThe interactions between sleep problems, autism symptoms and emotional and behavioural difficulties were explored using network analysis in 240 autistic children (mean age: 8.8 years, range 5–13 years) with moderate to severe sleep problems. Findings revealed a highly connected and interpretable network, with three separate clusters identified of the modelled variables. Depression, anxiety and behavioural difficulties were the most central variables of the network. Depression, anxiety and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns behaviours (RRBs) were the strongest bridging variables in the network model, transmitting activation both within and between other symptom clusters. The results highlight that depression and anxiety were highly connected symptoms within the network, suggesting support in these areas could be helpful, as well as future research.</p
The lingering laws? Does the Brexit Agreement provide the EU with authority to monitor the UK income tax system?
Get PDFA primary goal of Brexit supporters was the end of EU supervision of UK laws and the re-establishment of full UK sovereignty over all aspects of its legislative and administrative capacity. National sovereignty may, however, be compromised by international treaties in which the UK agrees to constrain the exercise of its sovereignty to gain benefits from its treaty partners and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement governing the post-Brexit relationship between the UK and EU is no exception. In particular, the Agreement appeared to impose four constraints on UK sovereignty in respect of its income tax system. A closer examination of the restrictive articles, however, suggests that three of the measures may have negligible practical impact on UK law-making powers. In contrast, the fourth measure preventing the UK from adopting concessionary tax measures that would amount to ‘state aid’ in EU terminology appears to have a direct impact on UK tax sovereignty. Its impact may be blunted, however, from seemingly incomplete or ineffective enforcement remedies. The final result may be a treaty that appears to constrain UK tax sovereignty and provides the EU with continuing authority to monitor UK tax law and administration, but which has little scope for practical impact
Problematising aspirations, transformations, and societal expectations:revisioning academic success and wellbeing through cross-cultural autoethnographic exploration
No full textHaving aspirations and goals to strive for provides a sense of purpose and motivation, which can greatly contribute to one’s overall happiness and satisfaction. However, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of how individual aspirations interact with societal expectations and constructs, potentially resulting in feelings of anxiety and frustration. This collaborative cross-cultural autoethnographic study examines the interplay between the individual and the sociocultural, with a special interest in Eastern and Western lenses of well-being. Based on data from autoethnographic narratives, fieldnotes, and reflection with critical friends, this study aims to provide an insider’s account of an international doctoral candidate’s experiential journey of aspiration/s, and transformation/s, to meet societal expectation/s. Through analysis of these experiences, we propose that societal constructs should be given more attention in discussions of well-being, to envision a more equitable educational environment in which aspiration/s and transformation/s can be better recognized and appreciated.</p
Conceptualising school-level responses to sexual harassment of women teachers as institutional gaslighting
No full textThis paper conceptualises the inaction of school leadership teams in response to systemic sexual harassment as institutional gaslighting, a theoretical tool to date unutilised in studies of sexual harassment in educational settings. Drawing on case studies of two women teachers who experienced sustained sexual harassment in Australian schools, and whose leadership responded with denial, minimisation and intentional mixed messaging, we argue that schools are home to and perpetuate unequal epistemic terrains, where women’s knowing is undermined by dominant operations of the school that work to maintain structural and cultural norms. These norms, we suggest, are informed by hegemonic masculinity and feminine stereotypes of irrationality and deviance, and prevent violence against women in schools being addressed. We argue that institutional gaslighting is a productive concept to expose the epistemic injustice that delegitimates women’s knowledge of their experience and help in addressing systemic issues with responding to sexual harassment in schools.</p
Can clinical guidelines reduce variation in transfusion practice? A pre–post study of blood transfusions during cardiac surgery
No full textBackground and Objectives: Previously published studies have consistently identified significant variation in red blood cell (RBC) transfusions during cardiac surgery. Clinical guidelines can be effective at improving the average quality of care; however, their impact on variation in practice is rarely studied. Herein, we estimated how variation in RBC use across cardiac surgeons changed after the publication of national patient blood management guidelines. Materials and Methods: We performed a pre–post study estimating change in variation in RBC transfusions across 80 cardiac surgeons in 29 hospitals using a national cardiac surgery registry. Variation across surgeons was estimated using fixed-effects regressions controlling for surgery and patient characteristics and an empirical Bayes shrinkage to adjust for sampling error. RBC use was measured by three metrics—the total number of units transfused, the proportion of patients transfused and the number of units transfused, conditional on receiving RBC. Results: The primary analysis utilized 35,761 elective cardiac surgeries performed between March 2009 and February 2015 and identified a 24.5% reduction (p < 0.0001) in mean total units transfused accompanied by a 37.2% reduction (p = 0.040) in the variation across surgeons. The reduction in mean total units was driven by both the proportion of patients transfused and the number of units transfused, conditional on receiving RBC, while the reduction in variation was only driven by the latter. Conclusion: In our study of RBC transfusions across cardiac surgeons, the surgeons who used more RBC in the pre-guideline period experienced larger reductions in RBC use after the guidelines were published.</p
‘I’m sick of being the problem’:autistic mothers’ experiences of interacting with schools for their autistic children
No full textSuccessful partnerships between families and schools can substantially improve children’s success in and out of school. Yet parents of autistic children often report considerable challenges with their children’s education. Almost no research, however, has examined autistic parents’ own experiences. We, therefore, sought the views and experiences of autistic parents’ interactions with schools for their autistic children. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 autistic mothers of autistic children engaged in education in Australia. We analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. Autistic mothers repeatedly expressed feeling like they were in a ‘war zone’, fighting ongoing battles to gain the necessary support for their autistic child and were ‘sick of being [viewed as] the problem’. They also felt that their expertise as parents – and experiential expertise as autistic parents – was often overlooked or ignored. All of this had negative effects on their and their children’s mental health. Despite these negative experiences, autistic mothers who had experienced positive interactions with schools highlighted the importance of mutual respect in establishing and maintaining successful school partnerships and how their own determination and self-advocacy helped to foster these relationships. This research sheds light on the critical ingredients of effective home–school partnerships for autistic families. Lay abstract: Good relationships between families and schools make a difference to children’s learning – and the same goes for autistic children. But parents of autistic children often find it very stressful interacting with teachers and school staff. In this study, we focused on autistic parents of autistic children. We wanted to know about their experiences of interacting with schools and the impact these had on them and their children. We spoke to 31 autistic mothers of autistic children about their experiences. They told us that they felt they were constantly fighting with schools to get the support needed for their autistic children and compared it to like being in a ‘war zone’. They were ‘sick of being [viewed as] the problem’ and felt that their views and autistic expertise were not taken seriously by teachers and schools. This was damaging to their autistic children’s mental health as well as their own. Autistic mothers did share some positive experiences too. They spoke about the value of mutual respect and its impact on successful school partnerships. Autistic mothers also spoke about standing up for themselves and their children and how this advocacy and self-advocacy helped them to build better relationships with schools. This research showed how difficult it can be for autistic families to interact with teachers and schools and the impact this can have on the whole family. It also showed us that strong, trusting relationships between school and families are possible – when autistic parents feel safe, and when their knowledge and lived experience are taken seriously by educators.</p
Inspired to build understanding:learning about sustainability and environmental education from within a virtual world
Get PDFThis study explores the use of virtual worlds, specifically Minecraft, on sustainability education and cognitive skills. Using the Teaching to Inspire model as a lens, we examine how students design sustainable virtual buildings and cityscapes aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the social-ecological systems (SES) framework. Our research demonstrates how virtual experiences can inspire future-thinking mindsets. The findings underscore the significance of curiosity, passion, and drive in the conative domain as housed in promoting student engagement and understanding of sustainability. The study emphasises the crucial role of teachers in facilitating critical thinking, inquiry, and reflection within virtual spaces to create a sense of place and emotional connection. This paper contributes to the existing literature on sustainability education and provides valuable insights into the potential of virtual worlds for environmental education.</p
Learning to cooperate against ensembles of diverse opponents
No full textThe emergence of cooperation in decentralized multi-agent systems is challenging; naive implementations of learning algorithms typically fail to converge or converge to equilibria without cooperation. Opponent modeling techniques, combined with reinforcement learning, have been successful in promoting cooperation, but face challenges when other agents are plentiful or anonymous. We envision environments in which agents face a sequence of interactions with different and heterogeneous agents. Inspired by models of evolutionary game theory, we introduce RL agents that forgo explicit modeling of others. Instead, they augment their reward signal by considering how to best respond to others assumed to be rational against their own strategy. This technique not only scales well in environments with many agents, but can also outperform opponent modeling techniques across a range of cooperation games. Agents that use the algorithm we propose can successfully maintain and establish cooperation when playing against an ensemble of diverse agents. This finding is robust across different kinds of games and can also be shown not to disadvantage agents in purely competitive interactions. While cooperation in pairwise settings is foundational, interactions across large groups of diverse agents are likely to be the norm in future applications where cooperation is an emergent property of agent design, rather than a design goal at the system level. The algorithm we propose here is a simple and scalable step in this direction