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The international literature on the impacts of globalization on large cities has insistently pointed to the increase in residential segregation. Three mechanisms have been identified as the causes of this phenomenon: globalization, which by disseminating neoliberal ideas throughout the world, generated changes in the regulatory models and paradigms that guide urban policy; institutional reforms toward market liberalization and the property and housing market were undertaken in various countries; real estate prices became the central mechanism for distributing the population throughout the city, reinforcing income inequality as the determinant of urban spatial organization. At the same time, privatization exacerbated the growing inequality of access to the services and infrastructure that ensure urban well-being, especially with regard to quality. The wealthier areas, where those with greater purchasing power concentrate, have at their disposal an abundant supply of goods and services, whereas the areas populated by the poor are supplied with inferior goods and services. Further, globalization caused structural changes originating in the transformation of the productive base of the cities, creating trends toward social polarization. The social structure of the great metropolises is no longer represented by a pyramid, and is expressed instead by an hourglass where the middle positions narrow while the extremities widen. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the distance between the average incomes of the higher and lower strata.

This study investigated the influence of social media on marital stability of married adults in Ilorin metropolis. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Influence of Social Media on Marital Stability Questionnaire was used to obtain relevant information for this study. The instrument was validated and the test re-test method was employed to determine the reliability and it yielded a coefficient of 0.81. Multistage sampling procedure was used in selecting 200 respondents for the study. One research question was raised while four null hypotheses were postulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Percentage and weighted means were used to analyze the descriptive analysis while t-test and Analysis of Variance were used to test the postulated hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that social media influenced marital stability of married adults by causing marital distraction, negligence of marital roles and responsibilities, creating conflict among spouses, encouraging marital infidelity among others. There was no significant difference in the influence of social media on marital stability of married adults in Ilorin metropolis based on gender while there were significant differences in the influence of social media on marital stability of married adults in Ilorin metropolis based on length of years in marriage, age and highest educational attainment. It was therefore recommended that married people should reduce their exposure to social media but rather be more committed to their marital relationship.

Why are some of the municipalities located on the most dynamic, populous and productive region of a nation, also the poorest of the nation? Why after decades of being at the center of national development policies, the municipalities of Greater Buenos Aires are still suffering some of the worst development indicators of the Argentina?

Massively parallel desktop computing capabilities now well within the reach of individual academics modify the environment for posterior simulation in fundamental and potentially quite advantageous ways. But to fully exploit these benefits algorithms that conform to parallel computing environments are needed. This paper presents a sequential posterior simulator designed to operate efficiently in this context. The simulator makes fewer analytical and programming demands on investigators, and is faster, more reliable, and more complete than conventional posterior simulators. The paper extends existing sequential Monte Carlo methods and theory to provide a thorough and practical foundation for sequential posterior simulation that is well suited to massively parallel computing environments. It provides detailed recommendations on implementation, yielding an algorithm that requires only code for simulation from the prior and evaluation of prior and data densities and works well in a variety of applications representative of serious empirical work in economics and finance. The algorithm facilitates Bayesian model comparison by producing marginal likelihood approximations of unprecedented accuracy as an incidental by-product, is robust to pathological posterior distributions, and provides estimates of numerical standard error and relative numerical efficiency intrinsically. The paper concludes with an application that illustrates the potential of these simulators for applied Bayesian inference.

Purpose – Flooding has become a recurring phenomenal in most cities in Nigeria. The 26 August 2011 flooding disaster which occurred in Ibadan is only an indication of magnitude of flooding problem in Nigerian cities. This chapter examines the impacts, vulnerability factors and disaster risk management framework in Ibadan metropolis.

Methodology/Approach – The survey design was used for the study and covers eleven local government areas (LGAs) affected by the flood. The study utilized both primary and secondary data. The primary data were obtained by physical observation and in-depth interview of affected households. In-depth interview was also carried out with key officials of State Ministry of Environment and Housing. The study also relies on the data from the Oyo State Government Task Force on Flood Prevention and Management report.

Findings – The chapter shows that the 26 August 2011 flood disaster in Ibadan metropolis caused monumental destructions in the city. The continuous construction on flood plains, indiscriminate dumping of refuse, excessive rainfall and deforestation were identified as the main vulnerability factors. The chapter shows that there is no adequate framework for disaster risk management in the city.

Research limitations – About 250 affected households in 11 LGAs were interviewed for the study due to time and budget constraints. This figure is considered meagre considering the number of affected households by the flood disaster. However, the random selection of affected households and key government officials helped to address this limitation.

Originality/value of chapter – The simultaneous identification of impacts, vulnerability factors and disaster risk management framework in the city provides an opportunity for the development of a holistic and proactive disaster risk management strategy in Ibadan metropolis.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to enhance understanding of misbehavior through an exploration of film and TV treatments of workplace relations.

Methodology/approach – Analysis of examples of misbehavior drawn from film and TV within a theoretical framework informed by formal and substantive rationality.

Findings – Workplace definitions of misbehavior are multi-faceted, contextually specific, and both perspective- and power-dependent. They are constructed within workplace settings, where expressions of formal and substantive rationality intersect with everyday working practices.

Research limitations/Implications – The discussion is limited by the mainly fictional character of the resources used.

Practical implications – The chapter illustrates how representations of organizations as “rational” are limited and how more complex understandings of rationality might contribute to a more nuanced view of the co-production of workplace misbehavior practices by managers, workers, and/or unions.

Social implications – The chapter illustrates how multiple rationalities may be expressed and socially embedded within specific workplace settings.

Originality/Value of chapter – The focus on mainly fictional examples drawn from popular culture to interpret workplace behavior is the chapter's most distinctive feature.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

In 1911 Sombart published Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Jews and Economic Life). As is well known Sombart conceived his essay – a response to Max Weber’s Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism) – as an attempt ‘to study more carefully’ the influence of religion on economic life, to focus on the relationship between religion and the spread of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and to explain the historical evolution of modern capitalism (from early to late capitalism).

This analytical work has partially been overshadowed by Sombart’s endorsement of Nazism (1934), especially with reference to the suspicion that he was anti-Semitic. In this chapter we deal (Parts 2 and 3) with the ‘ambiguous relationship’ between Sombart and Nazism, and Sombart’s reflections on the scientific irrelevance of racist theories. Then (Parts 4 and 5), we focus on the limits of Sombart’s methodological approach to the analysis of modern capitalism. The erroneous conclusions of his inquiry emerge if we compare them with those of scholars like Simmel, Schumpeter and Max Weber.

We describe a new Bayesian estimation algorithm for fitting a binary treatment, ordered outcome selection model in a potential outcomes framework. We show how recent advances in simulation methods, namely data augmentation, the Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm can be used to fit this model efficiently, and also introduce a reparameterization to help accelerate the convergence of our posterior simulator. Conventional “treatment effects” such as the Average Treatment Effect (ATE), the effect of treatment on the treated (TT) and the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) are adapted for this specific model, and Bayesian strategies for calculating these treatment effects are introduced. Finally, we review how one can potentially learn (or at least bound) the non-identified cross-regime correlation parameter and use this learning to calculate (or bound) parameters of interest beyond mean treatment effects.