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There is abundant literature analyzing the determinants of banks’ profitability through its main component: the net interest margin. Some of these determinants are suggested by seminal theoretical models and subsequent expansions. Others are ad-hoc selections. Up to now, there are no studies assessing these models from a Bayesian model uncertainty perspective. This paper aims to analyze this issue for the EU-15 countries for the period 2008-2014, which mainly corresponds to the Great Recession years.

It follows a Bayesian variable selection approach to analyze, in a first step, which variables of those suggested by the literature are actually good predictors of banks’ net interest margin. In a second step, using a model selection approach, the authors select the model with the best fit. Finally, the paper provides inference and quantifies the economic impact of the variables selected as good candidates.

The results widely support the validity of the determinants proposed by the seminal models, with only minor discrepancies, reinforcing their capacity to explain net interest margin disparities also during the recent period of restructuring of the banking industry.

The paper is, to the best of the knowledge, the first one following a Bayesian variable selection approach in this field of the literature.

Outlines the types of devices used by terrorists. Discusses how the terrorist threat can be assessed, how a building can be physically protected and how the property manager should respond to the perceived threat, both practically and reactively. Summarizes that the property manager′s security plan should consist of the identification of risks, physical protection measures, and the physical and procedural action that can be taken to reduce the risk of terrorism or deal with it should it occur.

This study aims to explore and empirically test variables influencing material delivery schedule inaccuracies?

A mixed-method case approach is applied. Explanatory variables are identified from the literature and explored in a qualitative analysis at an automotive original equipment manufacturer. Using logistic regression and random forest classification models, quantitative data (historical schedule transactions and internal data) enables the testing of the predictive difference of variables under various planning horizons and inaccuracy levels.

The effects on delivery schedule inaccuracies are contingent on a decoupling point, and a variable may have a combined amplifying (complexity generating) and stabilizing (complexity absorbing) moderating effect. Product complexity variables are significant regardless of the time horizon, and the item’s order life cycle is a significant variable with predictive differences that vary. Decoupling management is identified as a mechanism for generating complexity absorption capabilities contributing to delivery schedule accuracy.

The findings provide guidelines for exploring and finding patterns in specific variables to improve material delivery schedule inaccuracies and input into predictive forecasting models.

The findings contribute to explaining material delivery schedule variations, identifying potential root causes and moderators, empirically testing and validating effects and conceptualizing features that cause and moderate inaccuracies in relation to decoupling management and complexity theory literature?

Purpose – The author investigates how those who have engaged in political violence in the UK understand Prevent’s preemptive rationality, and how Prevent conceptualizes the trajectory toward “terrorism” in relation to the testimony of those who have engaged in “terrorist” violence and were convicted of terrorism offences.

Methodology/Approach – The author takes the assumptions that Prevent makes about risk (from the Prevent Strategy and other documents), and tests these against the testimony of former combatants from “the Troubles.”

Findings – Despite the trajectory toward violence not being considered to differ fundamentally nor demonstrated through evidence to operate differently from one era to the next, the premise of Prevent’s assumptions of the movement into violence and former combatant testimony are entirely foreign to each other.

Originality/Value – Although militants from “the Troubles” (a conflict ending in 1998) and Prevent (established in 2003) are speaking about the same country and narrating their “truth” within five years of each other, the differences in how former combatants and Prevent understand the trajectory toward violence have not been considered. This has remained a significant omission of terrorism scholarship.

This chapter examines the efficiency of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), Inc., electricity exchange following its major expansion in terms of market participants and geographic scope in 2014. Specifically, hourly day-ahead (forward) and real-time (spot) prices from 2014 to 2016 reveal that forward premiums are prevalent despite the increase in market size. Furthermore, these forward premiums do not adhere to Bessembinder and Lemmon’s (2002) commonly used general equilibrium model for electricity forward premia. A technical trading rule based on the relationship between day-ahead prices across hubs that was found to be profitable prior to MISO’s expansion still produces economically and statistically significant returns after the exchange’s growth.

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediation exit option, which is one of the most important tactics available to any third party mediator.

The paper analyzes a crucial intermediary channel between the Irish Republican Army (hereafter IRA) and the British Government utilizing unique material from the private papers of the intermediary, Brendan Duddy, including diaries that cover periods of intensive communication, extensive interviews with the intermediary and with participants in this communication on both the British Government and Irish Republican sides as well as recently released official papers from the UK National Archives relating to this communication.

The study reveals how the intermediary channel was used in order to get information, how the third party and the primary parties traded in asymmetries of information, and how the intermediary utilized the information advantage to increase the credibility of his threats of termination.

The study outlines an avenue for further research on the termination dynamics of mediation.

Understanding the conditions for successfully using the exit‐option is vital for policy‐makers, in particular for peace diplomacy efforts in other contexts than the Northern Ireland one.

The paper challenges previous explanations for why threats by mediators to call off further mediation attempts are successful and argues that a mediator can use the parties' informational dependency on him in order to increase his leverage and push the parties towards settlement.

The struggle against corruption is not an area where any state has had a sufficiently high success rate to become complacent, particularly when bearing in mind the evidence of the scale on which such crimes are being committed. This lack of success applies in terms of both the number of prosecutions brought and, at least in those states where the burden of proof rests on the state, the success rate in attaining successful prosecutions. Particular problems arise for developing countries. This paper considers reasons for the increase in the scale of the problem, and the steps a developing country will need to consider in terms of staff and institutional development, in addition to changes in its criminal and civil law. By comparison, it also looks at successful developments in developed countries that highlight approaches to the problem which may have an impact if used elsewhere.