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Although there has been considerable growth in the higher education systems of Turkey and China in about the last two decades, there is still a room for development in enabling equity in all regions, increasing opportunities and resources regardless of socio-economic status or gender differences. Students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have enough tools to change their fate for the better due to the accumulated barriers they face. Given this background, the chapter discusses how the barriers to equitable HE admissions relate to each other and which one has a greater negative impact over the Accumulated Conversion Barriers Modal we propose defined by personal, discriminatory, institutional, and geographical barriers. The perspectives of Turkish and Chinese HE stakeholders were examined through 21 in-depth interviews that were subjected to content analysis and interpreted in a comparative style using the lens of Capabilities Approach of Sen. We also offer policy suggestions to increase students’ conversion capacities for better outcomes to serve both the national and the international educational contexts owing to the adaptable nature of our modal to other countries experiencing similar issues in their higher education systems.

Consumption is a way of communication whereby consumers express, position or/and differentiate themselves within their society or affiliated groups. A great part of consumers’ lives are spent on various purchase activities, and many would be eager to understand the factors underlying those behaviours.

This chapter primarily deals with the cultural, social, psychological and personal factors that affect consumer behaviour. Each of these factors in relation to consumer behaviour is discussed in detail. The types of consumer buying behaviours and the consumer decision-making processes then provide the fundamentals of the topic along with their relevance to Turkish consumers.

Introduction: Studies on the insurance sector/companies have, in recent years, taken their place in literature at an increasing rate. Especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, the need for people to ensure their assets has structurally changed both the transaction volume and the yield structure of insurance sector. The increase in demand for insurance has also increased the appetite of investors to make an investment on this sector. The transaction volume of the insurance sector has increased year by year coupled with the number of insurance companies traded on the stock exchanges has started to increase in the same direction.

Aim: This chapter aims to determine the return structure of the Borsa Istanbul Insurance Index (XSGRT) based on daily closing values.

Method: Markedly with similar studies in the literature review, the authors determined that the Markov Regime Switching (MRS) model is the best-suited model for the current research. It was applied for the data set of XSGRT Index from 1997 to 2020.

Results: The result shows that XSGRT has three regimes named as expansion regime, normal regime and recession regime. Subsequently, it has been determined that the index generally attends to transition from the recession regime to the expansion regime and normal regime. This outcome is statistically significant at a 5% significance level and confirmed by backtesting results. Likewise, the duration of the recession regime is longer than the normal and expansion regime.

Conclusion: Despite the fact that the XSGRT has not yet completed its development compared to other main and sectoral indices, it is one of the indices that offer attractive earnings for investors. To put it differently, the desire of insurance companies to stay longer totally in the normal and expansion period and their immediate exit from the recession period provides them with a significant competitive advantage in contrast to other indices.

Originality/Value: This research contributes to the literature by providing additional evidence for existing studies using the longer duration of data set and applying the MRS model for Insurance Index. Best of our knowledge, it is the first study that examines the return structure of XSGRT based on its daily closing values from 1997 to 2020. In essence, investors can use the result of this study and compare it with other stock indices to make the accurate investment decision to maximise their welfare and return on their equity investments. The authors suggest that not only the return but also the regime structures of the invested shares (indices) should be taken into account for investment decisions.

The inadequate consideration of how forms of the state variously structure politics is identified as a significant flaw in political opportunity theory. This deficiency leads to conceptual “stretching” and frustrating contradictions between research findings in the social movement literature. For political opportunities to be correctly specified, differences in the mobilization contexts across democracies and non-democracies must be explicitly addressed. This article suggests how the institutional differences between democracies and non-democracies influence the prospect, form, and impact of social mobilization against the state. It also suggests the crucial role of social networks for mobilization in non-democracies. A reformulation of the research problem and a set of sensitizing propositions based on the theoretical reconceptualization are offered.

Understood as the simultaneous experience of necessarily conflicting attitudes, wishes, feelings, or intentions, the concept of ambivalence has a complex history in psychological and social analysis. Lüscher (2000) reviewed the history of this concept, initially used in the study of abnormal states, and then generalized to the realm of the usual and expectable in social life. It should be noted at the outset that the term “ambivalence” presents two problems for social analysis: adoption of a term initially intended to portray abnormal states for the expectable course of adult life, and the extension of a concept founded on the study of personal states to social analysis. Consistent with Bleuler’s (Riklin, 1910/1911) initial discussion of the term ambivalence,¹ Freud (1909, 1912, 1912–1913, 1914) attempted to resolve the first problem by showing that ambivalence – as the experience of mixed and conflicting sentiments regarding those who are particularly important in one’s own life – inevitably emerges out of the child’s effort to resolve the tension between social reality and his or her own desire focused on the parents of early childhood. At the same time, Freud compounded the second problem by regarding the realm of the social as the personal writ large.

Recently, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have begun to study the influence of attention, mimicry, and social context on emotional contagion. In this chapter, we will review the classic evidence documenting the role of these factors in sparking primitive emotional contagion, especially in occupational settings. Then we will discuss the new evidence, which scholars have amassed to help us better understand the role of culture in fostering the ability to read others’ thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Finally, we will briefly speculate as to where future research might be headed.