Socio-Cultural Impacts on Drug Trafficking Trends in Europe

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana S. Dolliver
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Multivariate Time Series ◽  
Criminological Theory ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Crime Type ◽  
Anomie Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Patterns

A myriad of national and international publications have detailed global patterns of drug trafficking for decades, with recent reports identifying Europe as a global consumption “hotspot” for the majority of popular drugs in the world. Yet, despite increasing levels of drug trafficking worldwide, scholars have not routinely examined this crime-type through the lens of a socio-cultural criminological theory. As such, this empirical study employed guidance from Institutional Anomie Theory. Data were collected from fourteen countries in Europe from 1995 to 2009 and analyzed using pooled cross-sectional multivariate time series. Trafficking patterns in cannabis, heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines were operationalized using officially reported drug seizure amounts. The findings from this study emphasize the need for differentiation between drug-types in future research, but also illustrate support for use of the theoretically informed variables.

Free Traders and Drug Smugglers: The Effects of Trade Openness on States' Ability to Combat Drug Trafficking

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horace A. Bartilow ◽  
Kihong Eom
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Statistical Model ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Trade Openness ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Openness To Trade ◽  
Pooled Time Series

AbstractThe theoretical literature presents conflicting expectations about the effects of trade openness on the ability of states to interdict drug trafficking. One view expects that trade openness will undermine drug interdiction; a second argues the opposite; a third argues that trade openness does not necessarily affect drug interdiction. This article assesses empirically the effects of trade openness on drug interdiction for countries in the Americas using a pooled time-series cross-sectional statistical model. It finds that trade openness decreases the interdiction capabilities of states in drug-consuming countries while increasing those of states in drug-producing countries. Greater openness to trade does not have a consistently significant effect on the interdiction capabilities of states in drug transit countries.

scholarly journals Exploring the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical education: an international cross-sectional study of medical learners

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Brown ◽  
Aliya Kassam ◽  
Mike Paget ◽  
Kenneth Blades ◽  
Megan Mercia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Medical Training ◽  
Well Being ◽  
World Health ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The World ◽  
Geographic Regions ◽  
The Impact

Background: The evidence surrounding the impact of COVID-19 on medical learners remains anecdotal and highly speculative despite the anticipated impact and potential consequences of the current pandemic on medical training. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent that COVID-19 initially impacted medical learners around the world and examine global trends and patterns across geographic regions and levels of training. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of medical learners was conducted between March 25–June 14, 2020, shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Results: 6492 learners completed the survey from 140 countries. Most medical schools removed learners from the clinical environment and adopted online learning, but students reported concerns about the quality of their learning, training progression, and milestone fulfillment. Residents reported they could be better utilized and expressed concerns about their career timeline. Trainees generally felt under-utilized and wanted to be engaged clinically in meaningful ways; however, some felt that contributing to healthcare during a pandemic was beyond the scope of a learner. Significant differences were detected between levels of training and geographic regions for satisfaction with organizational responses as well as the impact of COVID-19 learner wellness and state-trait anxiety. Conclusions: The disruption to the status quo of medical education is perceived by learners across all levels and geographic regions to have negatively affected their training and well-being, particularly amongst postgraduate trainees. These results provide initial empirical insights into the areas that warrant future research as well as consideration for current and future policy planning.

The Influence of Firm Maturation on Firms' Rate of Adjustment to Their Optimal Capital Structures

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (s-1) ◽  
pp. 70-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Pittman ◽  
Kenneth J. Klassen
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Initial Public Offerings ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Financial Policies ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Public Offerings ◽  
Tax Shields ◽  
Optimal Capital ◽  
Refinancing Costs

Extant empirical research on firms' adjustment to their optimal capital structures is cross-sectional. However, Scholes and Wolfson (1989) argue that refinancing costs that accumulate with age increasingly impede firms from restoring their optimal capital structures. This study provides evidence on the time-series variation in the rate at which firms move toward their leverage targets that is consistent with this prediction. In separate tests, age is measured from two dates—from firms' initial public offerings and from their incorporation—to examine whether the duration of their public and private experience, respectively, affect the evolution in financial policies. This paper contributes to the literature by developing a research design that isolates the influence of dynamic refinancing costs on the leverage adjustment problem. The evidence also justifies future research on Scholes and Wolfson's (1989) predictions about the time-series pattern in firms' tax shields by empirically validating that refinancing costs increasingly constrain their capital structures.

scholarly journals Joint Modeling of Local and Global Temporal Dynamics for Multivariate Time Series Forecasting with Missing Values

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (04) ◽  
pp. 5956-5963
Author(s):  
Xianfeng Tang ◽  
Huaxiu Yao ◽  
Yiwei Sun ◽  
Charu Aggarwal ◽  
Prasenjit Mitra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Real World ◽  
Missing Values ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Multivariate Time Series ◽  
Temporal Distribution ◽  
Joint Modeling ◽  
Adversarial Training ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
Real World Datasets

Multivariate time series (MTS) forecasting is widely used in various domains, such as meteorology and traffic. Due to limitations on data collection, transmission, and storage, real-world MTS data usually contains missing values, making it infeasible to apply existing MTS forecasting models such as linear regression and recurrent neural networks. Though many efforts have been devoted to this problem, most of them solely rely on local dependencies for imputing missing values, which ignores global temporal dynamics. Local dependencies/patterns would become less useful when the missing ratio is high, or the data have consecutive missing values; while exploring global patterns can alleviate such problem. Thus, jointly modeling local and global temporal dynamics is very promising for MTS forecasting with missing values. However, work in this direction is rather limited. Therefore, we study a novel problem of MTS forecasting with missing values by jointly exploring local and global temporal dynamics. We propose a new framework øurs, which leverages memory network to explore global patterns given estimations from local perspectives. We further introduce adversarial training to enhance the modeling of global temporal distribution. Experimental results on real-world datasets show the effectiveness of øurs for MTS forecasting with missing values and its robustness under various missing ratios.

scholarly journals Oil, Nontax Revenue, and the Redistributional Foundations of Regime Stability

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Time Series Analysis ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Government Revenue ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
The World ◽  
Regime Types

AbstractNontax revenues make up a substantial amount of government revenue around the world, though scholars usually focus on individual sources of such revenue (for example, foreign aid and state-owned oil companies). Using a theory of regime change that builds on recent models of the redistributional foundations of dictatorships and democracies, I generate hypotheses regarding all nontax revenue and regime stability. I argue that an increase in nontax revenue should be associated with less taxation of elites in democracies, more social spending in dictatorships, and more stability for both regime types. I find support for all three of these hypotheses in a cross-sectional time-series analysis, covering all countries and years for which the necessary data are available. Significantly, I show that the particular source of nontax revenue does not make a difference: they all act similarly with regard to regime stability and the causal mechanisms.

scholarly journals Outdoor time and dietary patterns in children around the world

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. e493-e501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Philippe Chaput ◽  
Mark S Tremblay ◽  
Peter T Katzmarzyk ◽  
Mikael Fogelholm ◽  
Vera Mikkilä ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dietary Patterns ◽  
Dietary Pattern ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Vigorous Physical Activity ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
After School ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The World ◽  
Before School

Abstract Background Whether outdoor time is linked to dietary patterns of children has yet to be empirically tested. The objective of this study was to examine the association between outdoor time and dietary patterns of children from 12 countries around the world. Methods This multinational, cross-sectional study included 6229 children 9–11 years of age. Children self-reported the time that they spent outside before school, after school and on weekends. A composite score was calculated to reflect overall daily outdoor time. Dietary patterns were assessed using a food frequency questionnaire, and two components were used for analysis: healthy and unhealthy dietary pattern scores. Results On average, children spent 2.5 h outside per day. After adjusting for age, sex, parental education, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, screen time and body mass index z-score, greater time spent outdoors was associated with healthier dietary pattern scores. No association was found between outdoor time and unhealthy dietary pattern scores. Similar associations between outdoor time and dietary patterns were observed for boys and girls and across study sites. Conclusions Greater time spent outside was associated with a healthier dietary pattern in this international sample of children. Future research should aim to elucidate the mechanisms behind this association.

The Effects of Government System Fractionalization on Satisfaction With Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Christmann ◽  
Mariano Torcal
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Satisfaction With Democracy ◽  
Institutional Determinants ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Comparative Study

Consensual-pluralistic institutional features of representative democracies have traditionally been associated with satisfaction with democracy (SWD). However, more recent studies report contradictory results on the effects of some of these institutional determinants on SWD. This article confirms these puzzling findings by showing that electoral proportionality increases SWD while other pluralistic factors such as government fractionalization produce the opposite effect. We illustrate this duality of counteracting effects by expanding the number of cases under study to different regions of the world in a comprehensive time-series cross-sectional sample of 58 democracies between 1990 and 2012. In the second part of the paper, we are able to reconfirm these findings at the individual level by employing survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems.

Prediction of Wind Farm Power Ramp Rates: A Data-Mining Approach

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyang Zheng ◽  
Andrew Kusiak
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Multivariate Time Series ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Time Series Models ◽  
Ramp Rate ◽  
Data Mining Algorithms ◽  
Mining Algorithms

In this paper, multivariate time series models were built to predict the power ramp rates of a wind farm. The power changes were predicted at 10 min intervals. Multivariate time series models were built with data-mining algorithms. Five different data-mining algorithms were tested using data collected at a wind farm. The support vector machine regression algorithm performed best out of the five algorithms studied in this research. It provided predictions of the power ramp rate for a time horizon of 10–60 min. The boosting tree algorithm selects parameters for enhancement of the prediction accuracy of the power ramp rate. The data used in this research originated at a wind farm of 100 turbines. The test results of multivariate time series models were presented in this paper. Suggestions for future research were provided.

scholarly journals Does family involvement on board of the directors contribute to firm profitability? An empirical evidence from Saudi Arabia

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shehabaddin Abdullah A. Al-Dubai ◽  
Ku Nor Izah Ku Ismail ◽  
Noor Afza Amran
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Family Involvement ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Listed Firms ◽  
Firm Profitability ◽  
The World ◽  
Promising Area

Literatures view board of the directors as the cornerstone of firm’s success. Therefore, family involvement on the board and its impact on firm profitability is an issue of interest and need to be addressed. The purpose of this paper lies in the fact that it extracts new empirical evidence from a promising area in the world. The study proceeds with a cross-sectional time-series analysis based on a data of 75 Saudi non-financial public listed firms from 2007-2011(375 firm-year observations) to examine family representing on board of the directors, family chairman, and founder chairman and its impact on firm performance (ROA). The study concludes the outperformance of firms in which family represents heavily on the board. In addition, the results suggest that not all family members are good stewards. Strictly speaking, founder chairman only found to be beneficial to the firm profitability rather than others. However, the results confirmed its robustness against different indicator (EPS) and when family firms only being selected.

scholarly journals Global patterns of seed germination after ingestion by mammals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego A. Torres ◽  
John H. Castaño ◽  
Jaime A. Carranza-Quiceno
Keyword(s):  
Seed Germination ◽  
Plant Communities ◽  
Seedling Recruitment ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Mammal Species ◽  
Plant Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Germination Success ◽  
Global Patterns

AbstractSeed germination is the first step in seedling recruitment. Understanding what factors determine germination success allows some predictions of the effect of climate change or defaunation on the dynamics of plant communities. Mammals play an important role on seed germination through the ingestion of fruit and seeds. However, the populations of many mammal species have been reduced throughout the world, affecting in many ways the dynamics of plant communities. To understand how the loss of mammal populations might impact the dynamics of plant communities first requires us to collect and synthetize all the available evidence on the effects of mammals on seedling recruitment. Here, we used meta-analytical methods to describe the global patterns of the ingestion of seeds by mammals and their effect on seed germination. Our results showed a positive cumulative effect of mammals on seed germination. However, this effect was not the same for all the mammal orders; it varied depending on the plant family and the bioregion. Additionally, increased seed germination was related to rapid germination. These data highlight the important role that some mammals such as Primates and Elephants have on seed germination, and this poses many questions about the mechanisms behind seed germination patterns that will help to guide future research efforts.

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