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Concerning the relationship between sustainability and economic performance, this paper examines the effect of environmental and social performance on the stock performance of European stock corporations. Stock performance is measured as the average monthly stock return for the period 1996-2001. The sustainability performance is measured both by an evaluation of the environ mental or social risks of the industry to which a company belongs and by an evaluation of the environmental or social activities of a company relative to the industrial average. We apply two-stage econometric approaches, which include recent insights from empirical finance. The most important result is that a higher environmental sector performance has a significantly positive influence on the stock performance. In contrast, a higher social sector performance has a negative influence. This effect is somewhat less significant The variables of corporate environmental and/or social activities relative to the industry average have no significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A priority in trust research is to deepen our understanding of trust processes: how does trust develop and break down? This requires further understanding of what actions have what effects on trust in interpersonal interactions. The literature offers a range of actions that have effects on trust, but gives little explanation of why they do so, and how the actions “hang together” in their effects on trust. The question is what different classes of trust building actions there may be. Using a “relational signalling” perspective, we propose hypotheses for classes of action that trigger the attribution of mental frames (by the trustor to the trustee), and trigger the adoption of those frames by the trustor. A survey-based empirical test of trust building actions among 449 managers in 14 European countries confirms the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years 1914-18 form what is, in some respects, the "dark ages" of British historical demography. Studies of European population movements in this century have either ignored the war or have dismissed it as unimportant in the long term. The reticence of historical demographers about the war is surely related to the statistical confusion which plagues studies of the 1914-18 conflict In the aftermath of the war, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sponsored a series of books on the economic and social history of the war. Most military and naval reports are also afflicted with substantial inaccuracies. Every combatant nation published several sets of statistics relating to its own losses. Unfortunately, no two sets are identical. The only alternative to using these general estimates is to trace the war losses of each of the three armed forces. What we need are sources which distinguish between the military effort of Britain and that of other Allied countries. If they record the incidence of casualties over time, and if they distribute British casualties by theatre of operation, by branch of service, and by rank, the reliability of the total can be checked against other records.

Medical devices (MDs) contribute to improve quality and effectiveness of healthcare. The MD industry is a heterogeneous, innovative, dynamic and growing sector. The existing regulatory framework for MDs has been in place for 20 years and needed a revision. In September 2012, the European Commission published a proposal for a new regulation on MDs which was amended by the Parliament in October 2013. This new regulation aims to harmonize practices, increase transparency and guarantee a high level of health protection. We conducted an analysis of the proposal to highlight the major upcoming changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the 'reproductive polarization' hypothesis, family-policy regimes unfavourable to the combination of employment with motherhood generate greater socio-economic differentials in fertility than other regimes. This hypothesis has been tested mainly for 'liberal' Anglo-American regimes. To investigate the effects elsewhere, we compared education differentials in age at first birth among native-born women of 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts in seven countries representing three regime types. Women with low educational attainment have continued to have first births early, not only in Britain and the USA but also in Greece, Italy, and Spain. Women at all other levels of education have experienced a shift towards later first births, a shift that has been largest in Southern Europe. Unlike the educationally heterogeneous changes in age pattern at first birth seen under the Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes, the changes across birth cohorts in the study's two 'universalistic' countries, Norway and France, have been educationally homogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that social stratification factors are closely related to different levels of political participation is a classical issue that has relevant normative as well as explanatory implications for the study of participation. Research on this topic has focused mainly on unequal participation in the United States and we know little about contemporary patterns in other contexts. This article uses data from the European Social Survey to explore the effect of various possible sources of inequality (gender, age, social class, education, income, ethnicity, and working status) on four political activities: voting, working with parties and action groups, attending demonstrations, and boycotting products. Overall, age, education, and social class emerge as the most common causes of distortion, while gender, membership in minorities, and occupational variables are less clearly related to participation. In conventional political activities the differences are more predictable in the direction of the disadvantaged, while demonstrators are in some respects undistinguishable from the general public. Finally, the fact that socioeconomic inequalities in turnout are unambiguously visible in most European countries stands in contrast to past research and deserves further attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid accumulation of state functions in agriculture during this century is a new kind of phenomenon in our history. It is also a process common to all developed capitalist countries in Europe. This article concentrates on the mare features of agricultural policies in Finland, in order to illustrate the socio-economic reasons behind state intervention in agriculture. Production, income and structural policies all have, besides agricultural, also more general social and economic goals. But mechanisms exist that counteract the attainment of these goals. Capitalization of subsidies to land prices, differentiation as a cause and as a consequence of policies, and rising accumulation threshold are considered. It is suggested that expanded reproduction is inevitable for family farms and that generation change is a most critical point of the reproduction process. Thus it also is a most strategic object for state intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]