Search results

The paper aims to examine the role played by property tax in influencing strategic decisions regarding marital separation and divorce in Italian municipalities.

The empirical analysis is conducted on a sample of 6,458 Italian municipalities by applying the ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variables (IVs) approaches.

The estimation results show a small increase in marital separations and divorces as the difference between the municipal secondary and primary home tax rate increases. Specifically, an increase of 1‰ in the property tax rate differentials is accompanied by an increase of six marital separations and four divorces per 1,000 inhabitants.

The main limitation of the analysis is that the strategic behavior of the married couple is inferred from econometric analysis with data aggregated at the municipal level. To investigate this phenomenon more precisely, it would be useful to have individual data collected by surveys on strategic divorce decisions due to property tax incentives.

This study contributes to the scant existing literature on the tax incentives for strategic divorce. It is the first study to empirically investigate the effects of property tax on separation and divorce decisions by investigating the Italian context. In Italy, a property tax was introduced in 1993, encouraging “false” divorces by spouses with a second home since the tax on the secondary home was set at a rate higher than that on the primary residence. Moreover, there were no tax deductions and no additional tax breaks on the secondary home, while they were established on the primary one. Higher property taxes and the absence of tax breaks on the secondary home may have encouraged a strategic behavior whereby many married couples filed for false separation and divorce in order to recover part of property tax rebates.

Geopolitical risks associated with the return of great power politics and growing nationalism have generated new challenges for foreign investors across industries. Oil and gas companies are well acquainted with such risks and have developed strategies to manage them. This paper reviews five of these strategies: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise. Firms outside of oil and gas can draw on these strategies as they navigate the emerging geopolitical context.

This paper reviews five strategies that oil and gas companies can use to manage geopolitical risk: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise.

This study identifies several strategies that oil and gas companies have used to manage geopolitical risks. These tools will be increasingly important in the shifting global political landscape.

Drawing on the experiences of oil and gas companies, this study has identified several strategies that companies can use to shield themselves from the risks that are currently emanating from geopolitics. While these best practices originate in the experiences of oil and gas firms, the ability to deftly manage geopolitical risks is becoming an important prerequisite for companies across industries.

This article aims to help educators provide a holistic view of the LGBTQ community by highlighting children’s books that include non-parental LGBTQ characters.

The author selected over 80 children’s books honored by the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List. Twenty-two books were analyzed that contain examples of LGBTQ adults existing beyond the homonormative nuclear family, e.g. two same-sex parents raising children.

The author discusses various ways of living represented in these books, such as chosen families, extended families, romantic partnerships and singlehood.

With the increased number of high-quality LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books published in the past decade, this study provides the foundation for educators to select various texts that reveal diverse representations of LGBTQ individuals.

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study analyzes the role that domination plays in conflicts among intimates. As the family engages in repeated conflicts over roles, the family also engages in negotiations over the family order, what role each party should play, interpretations of past events, and plans for the future. These conflicts take place against a backdrop of patriarchy that asymmetrically distributes power in the family to determine the family order. The data from this study come from a content analysis of mothers with substance use problems as depicted in the reality television show Intervention. The conflicts in these families reveal that these families develop a grinding family order in which families engaged in repeated conflict but also continued to operate as and identify as a family. These conflicts are shaped by and reinforce patriarchal expectations that mothers are central to family operation. The intervention at the end of each episode offered an opportunity for the family to engage in a concerted campaign to try to force the mother into treatment and reestablish the family order.

This study explores the relations between home and family in times of a pandemic, transporting the family away from the family home and, apparently, from the family itself. Specifically, it focuses art, culture, and society by shedding light on the enduring role of family rituals in creating and sustaining family identity while affirming the role of information and communication technology (ICT), in both the construction and reproduction of the family dynamics amid pandemic times. Reflection is taken upon a live-by-Zoom art exhibition opening. Family photo albums and several artifacts are used to show the family history, and, at the same time, the installed objects and surrounding narratives invite others to imagine the artist’s family as well as each audience member’s own family. The opening took place in March 2021, during the second lockdown in Portugal. Methodologically, the chapter draws on data collected through direct observation and autoethnography. Inspired by an arts-based approach, narrative is built on storytelling sociology, while using writing as a method of inquiry and reflexive composition to overcome the limits of the personal narrative. By the end, it is argued that as families “live” at Zoom, family rituals too. Zoom platform reproduces the family atmosphere, opportunities, and constraints. Looking at the art exhibit opening as a family ritual allows one to think about how individuals experienced family gatherings during the pandemic, but also how art might generate such familial intimacies in such exceptional times.

This paper according to the logic of the “digital access divide--digital capability divide--digital outcome divide” aims to systematically discuss the impact of the digital divide on individual happiness in China, accounting for the variations that exist across different groups, as well as the corresponding mechanisms.

This paper presents cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between the digital divide and individual happiness in China. The analyses are based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2017, which academic institutions run on the Chinese Mainland. This database contains information on respondents' Internet access, skills and consequences of use, which can measure the digital divide of Chinese individuals at three levels.

First, individual happiness declined when they experienced the digital access divide in China. For the digital capability divide, the lower the usage skills, the more individual happiness declined. When analyzing the digital outcome divide, the greater the negative consequences, the more individual happiness declined. Second, the impacts of digital access, capability and outcome divide vary according to age, gender, education degrees, hukou, region and sub-dimensions. Third, the digital access and capability divide reduce individuals' happiness by lowering their self-rated social and economic status, whereas the digital outcome divide reduce individual happiness by lowering their fairness perception and social trust.

The authors believe that this is the first study to examine the impact and its variations among different groups of the three-level digital divide on individual happiness, as well as its mechanisms.

This study aims to examine Victorian primary school parents’ perspectives about a potential school-provided lunch program (LP).

An online cross-sectional survey was conducted in Victoria, Australia, in 2022 to explore parents’ perceptions regarding the lunch menu, funding source, amount willing to pay, frequency of meals and special dietary needs of a school-provided LP.

Over half of parents (57% out of 359) said they would allow their child to participate in a school LP, 34% were unsure and only 9% said they would not. The opportunity for hot cooked lunches at school and the perceived convenience for parents were the top two reasons for favouring such a program. Fifty-eight percent were in favour of hybrid-type funding from both the government and parents. The most preferred amount to pay per meal was AUD5-6 (43%), followed by AUD3-4 (25%). Parents expected meals to be healthy and made from whole food and cater to the special dietary and cultural needs of their children. They also expected enough time to be allocated so children could eat and enjoy the meals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore Victorian parents’ perceptions regarding the above aspects of a school-provided LP. The findings suggest that parents are receptive to a school-provided LP; they, however, did have several expectations regarding the menu and time for eating. These findings provide important directions for designing future school-provided LPs at primary schools in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of labour force participation and the factors affecting labour supply among older persons in Ghana. Both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply were analysed.

The paper uses nationally representative samples of household and individual data in 2016–2017 – Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7) data – for the analysis. Heckman’s sample selection model is used to analyse both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply.

The study found that older persons in Ghana who are pensioners, widowed, have high levels of education, poor health status and live in urban areas are less likely to participate actively in the labour market. On the other hand, being head of a household, married and owning certain assets increase the likelihood of an older person to work. Furthermore, pensions, household headship and post-secondary education have negative effects on the labour supply as having them make older persons work fewer hours per week compared to their counterparts.

This research is the first study to examine the prevalence of old age employment and factors that affect labour market decisions of older persons in Ghana. It also adds to the limited literature on pension and retirement decisions in developing countries.

Financial inclusion can be proxied by banking status. The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential effects of financial capability on the financial fragility of US adults with various banking statuses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study utilized the 2021 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) dataset to investigate the relationship between financial capability and financial fragility among consumers with different banking statuses. The analysis controlled for employment shocks, health shocks and other consumer characteristics. Banking statuses included fully banked, under-banked (utilizing both banking and alternative financial services) and unbanked individuals. Logistic regression analyses were conducted on both the entire sample and subsamples based on banking statuses.

The results showed that financial capability was negatively associated with financial fragility. The magnitude of the potential negative effect of financial capability was the greatest among the fully banked group, followed by the underbanked and unbanked groups. Respondents who were underbanked or unbanked were more likely to experience financial fragility than those who were fully banked. Additionally, respondents who were laid off or furloughed during the pandemic were more likely to experience financial fragility than those without employment shocks. The effect size of financial capability factors was greater than that of COVID-19 shock factors. These results suggest that higher levels of both financial capability and financial inclusion may be effective in reducing the risk of financial fragility.

This study represents one of the first attempts to examine the potential effects of financial capability on financial fragility among consumers with various banking statuses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this study offers new evidence to determine whether COVID-19 shocks, as measured by health and employment status, are associated with financial fragility. Additionally, the effect size of financial capability factors is greater than that of COVID-19 shock factors. The results from the 2021 NFCS dataset provide valuable insights for banking professionals and public policymakers on how to enhance consumer financial wellbeing.

Corruption perception is essential to study because it can shape people’s attitudes toward the government. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to address this key question: what factors are associated with a non-expert’s judgment of whether Canada is corrupt?

This study uses the World Value Survey conducted in Canada in October 2020. This survey is based on a nationally representative sample of a cross-section of adult Canadian residents, including Canadian citizens and permanent residents and those who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents.

Based on this study, some conclusions can be made. First, people accessing corruption news from the traditional news media are less likely than those receiving information from the new media to perceive the state (in this case, Canada) as corrupt. Second, people who have less confidence in public institutions are more likely to perceive a country as corrupt. Third, people who participate in electoral and non-electoral forms of political participation are more likely to perceive the state and its public officials as corrupt. Fourth, regardless of which political party is in power, individuals who lean right politically are more likely than those on the left to perceive the state as corrupt. Finally, immigrants are less likely than those born in Canada to perceive the state as corrupt. This work enriches the literature on the substantive understanding of the factors associated with corruption perception.

Studies investigating factors associated with public perception of corruption tend to focus on developing countries. The current study contributes to filling this gap in knowledge by examining correlates of corruption perception in Canada. As a result, this study contributes to the literature on factors associated with corruption perception, especially in the developed country context.