The Impact of External Factors on Stock Return Volatility in the European Banking Sector

Purpose: The main aim of the paper is to examine the impact of external determinants on the banking stock return volatility to evaluate it in terms of the stock market capitalization. Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted on 182 banks from 26 countries. The sample selected for the study includes all European banks listed on the stock exchange. Quarterly data from the period between 2004 and 2016 was used; it was collected and compiled over a period of 2 years. The research method applied was the panel data model with fixed effects (with or without a robust estimator) and random effects. Findings: Determinants that have a major and statistically significant impact on the analyzed dependent variables are: the unemployment rate, the real interest rate, the beta in Sharpe’s Single-Index Model and the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index and the EURO STOXX50 index. Research limitations/implications: Insights about the strength and direction of influence of these variables on stock return volatility are a valuable addition to the existing body of knowledge that investors resort to when making decisions relating to the capital market. Limitations: The main limitation of this study lies in the fact that the results of the analysis apply solely to the banking sector. Originality/value: Insights about the strength and direction of influence of these variables on stock return volatility are a valuable addition to the existing body of knowledge that investors resort to when making decisions relating to the capital market.

Un-taming the Shrew

This article discusses the adaptation film, Shakespeare Retold: The Taming of the Shrew, as compared to original play, The Taming of the Shrew, by Shakespeare by highlighting the different modern perspective of the film. Likely to be interpreted as a valuable addition to the play with the ending it proposes and the way it handles the issue of taming, the film brings the play to the attention of the modern audience by clarifying the vague details and contextualising it in the modern English. In this respect, the article aims to bring the film and the play into focus by introducing a fresh and lively re-interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew to the Shakespearean drama studies.

Al-Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī and the Prelude of his Tafsīr al-Tibyān al-Qur’ān: An Analytical and Descriptive Study

Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī, an Indian-subcontinent contemporary commentator wrote tafsīr with a scholarly prelude/introduction. Additionally, he derived necessary references to Quranic verses along with the syntactic views in quite expressive and simple manner. Thus, his remarkable tafsīr; tafsīr al-tibyān al-Qur’ān, and more particularly his prelude/preface, expounds on the issues faced by ordinary people and makes valuable addition in layman understanding about the meaning of the text. Therefore, this article presents a descriptive and analytical study of the prelude/introduction to his commentary so that it becomes easy for the reader to know the views and ideas of Shaykh Ghulām Rasūl al-Sa‘īdī before delving into his tafsīr work.

Synergy conformal prediction applied to large-scale bioactivity datasets and in federated learning

Confidence predictors can deliver predictions with the associated confidence required for decision making and can play an important role in drug discovery and toxicity predictions. In this work we investigate a recently introduced version of conformal prediction, synergy conformal prediction, focusing on the predictive performance when applied to bioactivity data. We compare the performance to other variants of conformal predictors for multiple partitioned datasets and demonstrate the utility of synergy conformal predictors for federated learning where data cannot be pooled in one location. Our results show that synergy conformal predictors based on training data randomly sampled with replacement can compete with other conformal setups, while using completely separate training sets often results in worse performance. However, in a federated setup where no method has access to all the data, synergy conformal prediction is shown to give promising results. Based on our study, we conclude that synergy conformal predictors are a valuable addition to the conformal prediction toolbox.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity. Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250-750

This article reviews a collection of twenty-six studies on Eurasia in Late Antiquity, edited by Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas (2018). Aside from presenting a brief summary of all the chapters included in the volume, I discuss several contributions at length and engage with the methodology outlined by the editors in the Introduction. While the book focuses on Late Antique steppe empires (Huns, Türks, Avars, etc.) and the multiple ways these interacted with the great sedentary states of Eurasia (Byzantium, Iran, China), many chapters offer exciting new perspectives on a score of other topics, such as Silk Road trade, religion, history of science, migration, diplomacy and political ideology. On the whole, Empires and Exchanges is an extremely valuable addition to the growing number of studies that attempt to provide a holistic approach to Eurasian history.

You’re Hired!

While job interviewing training is part of the transition planning and school-to-work curriculum, using virtual reality (VR) can be a valuable addition to the current curriculum, specifically given the unique characteristics of individuals with ASD. This article will provide step-by step procedures to integrate VR into the current classroom transition training program.

Havi Dreifuss (Ben-Sasson), Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust: The Jewish Perspective, trans. Ora Cummings. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2017. 304 pp.

This chapter examines Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust (2017), an English translation of Havi Dreifuss' Hebrew-language doctoral dissertation (completed in 2005). This book is a unique scholarly examination of Polish–Jewish relations during the Holocaust from a perspective of Jewish views. It is not a history of Polish–Jewish relations per se but rather a history of changing Jewish perceptions of Poland and the Poles from the beginning to the end of the Second World War. Based largely on unpublished wartime diaries and writings preserved in Yad Vashem as well as some materials from other archives, it also contains wartime photographs and a sizable, 60-page appendix of documents. The appendix itself, a rich collection of previously unpublished wartime testimonies, makes Dreifuss' book a valuable addition to any Holocaust library.

Playing When Paying and What Happens Next: Customer Satisfaction and Word-of-Mouth Intention in Gambled Price Promotions

Gambled price promotions, i.e., discounts in which the customers’ savings depend on the outcome of a game, have recently gained increasing attention from research and practice. This type of promotion is often framed as an in-store event, and consumers experience two properties inherent in gambling: entertainment and varied financial payoffs. Depending on the consumers’ assessments of these two elements, these experiences might drive two postpurchase consequences of such campaigns: customer satisfaction with the retailer and word-of-mouth intention. To assess these effects, two field quasi-experiments with gambled price promotions were conducted: one in a candy store and the other in a retail furniture store. Two main findings emerge from these studies: (1) The customers in both studies endorse gambled price promotions and are more willing to engage in word-of-mouth when participating in such a campaign. The effect of gambled price promotions on customer satisfaction is positive in the low-stakes setting of the candy store but insignificant in the furniture store. (2) The positive effects of such promotions are mediated by their entertainment value and moderated by the consumers’ assessments of the discount. The implication of these results is that, in addition to the already known revenue-increasing prepurchase effects, gambled price promotions can also result in positive postpurchase effects and should represent a valuable addition to the seller’s promotion toolbox.

Parody and the Role of Song in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

This chapter deals with the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As Monty Python’s first full-length film, Holy Grail combines the sketch comedy style of the troupe with a loose interpretation of Arthurian legend. Although chock-full of anachronisms and outright mockery, Monty Python’s version of Arthurian legend nonetheless represents a valuable addition to the retellings of the story in the twentieth century. While the literature on the Holy Grail offers a foundation for considering the film as an adaptation of Arthurian legend, little work has been done on the film’s music and how it enhances the story. This chapter will emphasize the role of the music, especially the songs written by Neil Innes, arguing that they not only provide atmosphere but augment the narrative (such as it is). In this way, this chapter will also lay the groundwork for examining Holy Grail as the basis for Eric Idle’s later musical, Spamalot.

Dalit Conversion Memories in Colonial Kerala and Decolonisation of knowledge

This article seeks to decolonise knowledge of the conventional history of Dalits’ Christian conversion and its implications in colonial Kerala. As the missionary archive is the only source of Dalit Christian history writing in Kerala, in this historiography social historians have been unable to include the memories of Protestant missionary work at the local level by the local people themselves. Their experiences and rich accounts are marked by dramatic actions to gain socio-economic freedom and to establish a safe environment with the scope for future development. This article identifies how Dalit Christians themselves, in a specific locality, remember their conversion history, suggesting thereby the scope for a valuable addition to the archive.