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Explores the practical implications and the psychological meaning of the links between specific job competences and personality variables using biographical material from the lives of famous people such as Anita Roddick, Sir John Harvey‐Jones, Lord Shaftesbury and Mikhail Gorbachev. Uses results from an earlier study, involving a meta‐analysis of personality data to provide an empirical base. Focuses on four areas: “creative/innovative”, “analysis and judgement”, “resilience” and “persuasiveness”.

This chapter problematizes the body politics of American liberalism, as viewed through the lens of health policy. The author suggests that American efforts to pursue basic health goals are undercut by the particular way in which American liberals – and their state – conceptualize bodies. To understand the theoretical basis of this body politics, the chapter examines policy preoccupations such as the institution of informed consent, malpractice reform, and efforts to establish a Patients’ Bill of Rights. Finally, considering the ideological contexts that have given rise to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the author gestures toward the establishment of a stronger liberal – and possibly post-liberal – health care system that takes the embodiment of its subjects seriously.

Today, there are more ways to move freight than ever before. Here is how to tie transportation handling to strategic planning and reduce your company's freight bills.

This chapter is about the modern, Western education system as an economic system of production on behalf of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) and globalization towards a single, global social space around market capitalism, liberal democracy and individualism.

The schooling process is above all an economic process, within which educational labour is performed, and through which the education system operates in an integrated fashion with the (external) economic system.

It is mainly through children’s compulsory educational labour that modern schooling plays a part in the production of labour power, supplies productive (paid) employment within the CMP, meets ‘corporate economic imperatives’, supports ‘the expansion of global corporate power’ and facilitates globalization.

What children receive in exchange for their appropriated and consumed labour power within the education system are not payments of the kind enjoyed by adults in the external economy, but instead merely a promise – the promise enshrined in the Western education industry paradigm.

In modern societies, young people, like chattel slaves, are compulsorily prevented from freely exchanging their labour power on the labour market while being compulsorily required to perform educational labour through a process in which their labour power is consumed and reproduced, and only at the end of which as adults they can freely (like freed slaves) enter the labour market to exchange their labour power.

This compulsory dispossession, exploitation and consumption of labour power reflects and reinforces the power distribution between children and adults in modern societies, doing so in a way resembling that between chattel slaves and their owners.

The beta coefficient used for the cost of equity calculation is at the heart of the valuation process. This study conducts comparative analyses of the classical capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and downside CAPM risk parameters to gain further insight into which risk parameter leads to better performing risk measures at explaining stock returns.

The study conducts a comparative analysis of 16 risk measures at explaining the stock returns of 4531 companies of 20 developed and 25 emerging market index for 2000–2018. The analyses are conducted using both the global and local indices and both USD and local currency returns. Calculated risk measures are analyzed in a panel data setup using a univariate model. Results are investigated in country-specific and model-specific subsets.

The results show that (1) downside betas are better than CAPM betas at explaining the stock returns, (2) both risk measure groups perform better for emerging markets, (3) global downside beta model performs better than global beta model, implying the existence of the contagion effect, (4) high significance levels of total risk and unsystematic risk measures further support the shortfall of CAPM betas and (5) higher correlation of markets after negative shocks such as pandemics puts global CAPM based downside beta to a more reliable position.

The data are limited to the index securities as beta could be time varying.

Results overall provide insight into the cost of equity calculation and emerging market assets valuation.

The framework and methodology enable us to compare and contrast CAPM and downside-CAPM risk measures at the firm level, at the global/local level and in terms of the level of market development.

This paper empirically investigates the link between expected returns on stocks and a set of variables that describe the general state of economic activity. The model relates the first and second conditional moments on stock excess returns to the conditional variances and covariances of a set of prespecified macroeconomic factors. The estimation results suggest that industrial production growth, inflation, and short‐term interest rates help explain the behavior over time of expected excess returns on stocks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the conditionally expected return on size-based portfolios in an emerging market (EM) is determined by the country’s world risk exposure. The authors analyze the degree of financial integration of 23 emerging equity markets grouped into five size portfolios using the conditional international asset pricing model with both world and domestic market risks. The authors also compare the model’s fitness on the predictability of portfolio returns by using world and EM indices.

This study investigates whether large-cap stocks are priced globally and whether mid- and small-cap stocks are strongly influenced by domestic risk factors. The authors first examine the predictability of large-, mid-, and small-cap stock portfolio returns by using global and local variables, and next compare the model fitness by using world and EM indices on the prediction of size-based stock returns. Finally, the authors test whether the world price of covariance risk is the same for different portfolios.

The authors find that the conditional expected returns of large-cap stocks should be priced by global variables. Mid- and small-cap stocks are influenced by domestic variables rather than global variables, and their returns are priced by local residual risks. The test of the conditional asset pricing model shows that the largest stocks have the smallest mean absolute pricing errors (MAE), and their pricing errors are lower in large markets than in small markets. Third, the EM index offers more predictability for the excess returns of mid- and small-cap stocks than the world market index, but the explanatory power of this index does not increase for large-cap stocks.

EMs in the past were known as segment markets, with local risk factors more important than global risk factors, suggesting significant benefits from adding EMs to global portfolios. It would be interesting to examine whether financial integration differs for various firm sizes in the markets.

On 24th January this year the new and long‐promised legislation for public libraries in England and Wales made its bow in the shape of the Public Libraries and Museums Bill. Its first reading took place in the House of Commons on that day, and the unopposed second reading was on 5th February. As we write, future timing is uncertain, and it may be that by the time our readers are perusing these pages that the Bill will hare been passed in all its stages. The 23 clauses of the Bill occupy only 12½ pages. Briefly, the Bill will place the development of the public library service under the superintendence of the Minister of Education, and will set up two advisory councils as well as regional councils for interlibrary co‐operation. Non‐county boroughs and urban districts of less than 40,000 population which are existing library authorities will have to apply to the Minister for approval to continue as such. Clause 7 states that every library authority has a duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service, while the succeeding clause provides that, apart from certain exceptions, no charges shall be made by public library authorities. The Bill places considerable powers upon the Minister. Like most Bills, there is much in it which is open to interpretation. Does, for instance, clause 8, subsection (1) mean that those library authorities which are at present charging for the issue of gramophone records will have to cease doing so? This would seem to be the case, and we hope it is the case. On the other hand, which precise facilities are meant in subsection (4) of the same clause? Librarians will be disappointed that there is no reference to the need for library authorities to appoint separate library committees, nor is there a duty placed upon them to appoint suitably qualified persons as chief librarians. The Minister is given the power of inspection, and few library authorities or librarians will fear this. On the other hand no state financial assistance to library authorities is mentioned. In the 1930s and 19405 many wanted state aid but feared the consequential inspection. Now we have got the inspection without the money! When the Bill appeared, The Library World asked several librarians for their brief first impressions and in the following symposium will be found the views of a city librarian, a county librarian, two London librarians, a Welsh librarian, the librarian of a smaller town, and a member of the younger generation whose professional future may well be shaped by this new legislation.

The paper uses 101 years of Chilean and international financial assets returns to investigate mean-variance optimal portfolio allocations. The key conclusion is that the share of international unhedged investments is substantial even in minimum risk portfolios (20%), unless the period 1980–2002 is assumed to be drawn from a different distribution and previous history is disregarded. In addition to that, the paper finds that mean-variance optimal investors would have generated substantial demand for an asset replicating the return profile of an efficient pay-as-you-go pension scheme. Labour income and departures from log-normality of returns might, however, affect the latter conclusion.