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This study aims to quantify the cost of rebalancing Sharīʿah-compliant indexes, both economically and statistically.

An empirical approach is employed where the rebalanced Sharīʿah-compliant index is calculated numerous times with different lags in rebalancing, and the number of stocks and their cost across time are determined in order to identify the optimal rebalancing frequency.

This paper finds that annual Sharīʿah rebalancing does not lead to significant differences in portfolio returns, even though it does bring some advantages in cumulative wealth starting from the third year onwards and brings about better risk-return characteristics measured in terms of the Sharpe ratio. However, these advantages involve an average annual shifting between 30 and 60% of the portfolio market capitalization, which would be costly at any level of transaction costs.

A private investor may be better off holding a constant portfolio and only rebalancing in three-year intervals since this was shown to possess similar portfolio returns and cumulative wealth results. Any advantages of annual rebalancing in terms of risk-return characteristics may be offset by transaction costs of rebalancing. Sharīʿah scholars and practitioners are to determine when the correct time for rebalancing really is, taking into consideration the cost of rebalancing vis-à-vis the advantages in cumulative wealth and risk-return characteristics of the portfolio.

Predictions that Islamic indexes will perform well during financial crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, miss the cost of frequent rebalancing. This paper addresses this issue in an empirical manner learning from the previous crisis in 2008.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.

The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.

The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.

The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

In this contribution to EDI's professional insights, the authors develop practical and evidence-based recommendations that are developed for bias mitigation, discretion elimination and process optimization in panel evaluations and decisions in research funding. An analysis is made of how the expectation of “selling science” adds layers of complexity to the evaluation and decision process. The insights are relevant for optimization of similar processes, including publication, recruitment and selection, tenure and promotion.

The recommendations are informed by experiences and evidence from commissioned projects with European research funding organizations. The authors distinguish between three aspects of the evaluation process: written applications, enacted performance and group dynamics. Vignettes are provided to set the stage for the analysis of how bias and (lack of) fit to an ideal image makes it easier for some than for others to be funded.

In research funding decisions, (over)selling science is expected but creates shifting standards for evaluation, resulting in a narrow band of acceptable behavior for applicants. In the authors' recommendations, research funding organizations, evaluators and panel chairs will find practical ideas and levers for process optimization, standardization and customization, in terms of awareness, accountability, biased language, criteria, structure and time.

Showing how “selling science” in research funding adds to the cumulative disadvantage of bias, the authors offer design specifications for interventions to mitigate the negative effects of bias on evaluations and decisions, improve selection habits, eliminate discretion and create a more inclusive process.

To uncover age inequalities in participation in higher education (HE) in Spain, the socio-demographic profile of Spanish adult undergraduates is compared to that of the general population of the same age group (25–54). Specific attention is devoted to differentials between face-to-face and distance adult students.

The study is mainly based on a comparative analysis of quantitative data generated by an online survey conducted by the authors among students over the age of 25 enrolled in Spanish public universities. Concurrent secondary sources have been considered as well.

Employment and family obligations appear as powerful conditioners of adults' access to HE, their choice of study mode (face-to-face or distance) and their area of study. The possession of previous HE qualifications also appears as an important factor differentiating adult undergraduates from the general population.

The online survey is intended to reveal the main socio-demographic barriers to adult access to HE in Spain, rather than to draw a statistically representative profile of the target universe. The standard methodological recommendations have been followed to control the expected low response rate for the online questionnaire.

The study points to the need to deeply articulate current university-level compensatory mechanisms with macro-level age-sensitive social policies.

Life course policies aimed at reducing age educational inequalities are advanced.

The social conditioners of adult participation in HE are addressed through a conceptual framework combining the life-course perspective with the prevalent research approach, centred on the notions of lifelong learning and non-traditional learners' unequal access.

This paper presents a follow-on study that quantifies geolingual markers and their apparent connection with authorship collaboration patterns in canonical Digital Humanities (DH) journals. In particular, it seeks to detect patterns in authors' countries of work and languages in co-authorship networks.

Through an in-depth co-authorship network analysis, this study analysed bibliometric data from three canonical DH journals over a range of 52 years (1966–2017). The results are presented as visualised networks with centrality calculations.

The results suggest that while DH scholars may not collaborate as frequently as those in other disciplines, when they do so their collaborations tend to be more international than in many Science and Engineering, and Social Sciences disciplines. DH authors in some countries (e.g. Spain, Finland, Australia, Canada, and the UK) have the highest international co-author rates, while others have high national co-author rates but low international rates (e.g. Japan, the USA, and France).

This study is the first DH co-authorship network study that explores the apparent connection between language and collaboration patterns in DH. It contributes to ongoing debates about diversity, representation, and multilingualism in DH and academic publishing more widely.