Friday, April 3, 2020

These findings suggest that regulatory risk is a major cost to firms, but the largest firms are able to manage that risk better

Measuring the Cost of Regulation: A Text-Based Approach Charles W. Calomiris, Harry Mamaysky, Ruoke Yang. NBER Working Paper No. 26856, March 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26856

Abstract: We derive a measure of firm-level regulatory costs from the text of corporate earnings calls. We then use this measure to study the effect of regulation on companies’ operating fundamentals and cost of capital. We find that higher regulatory cost results in slower sales growth, an effect which is mitigated for large firms. Furthermore, we find a one-standard deviation increase in our preferred measure of regulatory cost is associated with an increase in firms’ cost of capital of close to 3% per year. These findings suggest that regulatory risk is a major cost to firms, but the largest firms are able to manage that risk better.

Women were 4x more likely than men to report to think it was right to limit people’s freedom in order to block the virus spread, and 3x more likely to request more severe punishment for risky behaviors

Simione, Luca, and Camilla Gnagnarella. 2020. “Differences Between Health Workers and General Population in Risk Perception, Behaviors, and Psychological Distress Related to COVID-19 Spread in Italy.” PsyArXiv. April 3. doi:10.31234/osf.io/84d2c

Abstract: In this study, we investigated the perception of risk and the worries about COVID-19 infection in both healthcare workers and general population in Italy. We studied the difference in risk perception in these two groups, and how this related to demographic variables and psychological factors such as stress, anxiety, and death anxiety. To this aim, we administered an online questionnaire about COVID-19 together with other questionnaires assessing the psychological condition of participants. First, we found that the exposition to infection risk, due to living area or job, increased the perceived stress and anxiety (i.e. medical staff in North Italy was more stressed and anxious respect to both medical- and non-medical participants from Center and South Italy). Then, we conducted hierarchical logistic regression models on our data to assess the response odds ratio relatively to each predictor on each dependent variable. We found that health workers reported higher risk perception, level of worry, and knowledge as related to COVID-19 infection compared to general population. Also psychological state, gender, and living area were important predictors of these factors. Instead, judgments about behaviors and containment rules were more linked to demographics, such as gender and alcohol consumption. We discussed these results in the light of risk factors for psychological distress and possible interventions to meet the psychological needs of healthcare workers.

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Women were 4x more likely than men to report to think it was right to limit people’s freedom in order to block the virus spread, and 3x more likely to request more severe punishment for risky behaviors

From 2019... Bacha posh in Afghanistan: factors associated with raising a girl as a boy

From 2019... Bacha posh in Afghanistan: factors associated with raising a girl as a boy. Julienne Corboz, Andrew Gibbs & Rachel Jewkes. Culture, Health & Sexuality, Volume 22, 2020 - Issue 5, Pages 585-598, Jun 17 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2019.1616113

Abstract: This paper examines the factors associated with the cultural phenomenon of bacha posh in Afghanistan (in which girls are dressed and raised as boys), which occurs against a background of rigid gender norms and the male-centric nature of Afghan families. Survey data were collected from 1463 women in two provinces of Afghanistan, Kabul and Nangarhar. The primary outcome is a nominal variable, derived from the question, ‘Do you have any girl in your family who has been raised for any time as a boy?’ Independent variables comprise women’s socio-demographic characteristics, family composition, economic characteristics, patriarchal gender attitudes and perceptions of community patriarchal attitudes. Factors associated with bacha posh include women having fewer sons and more daughters, working in the past three months and having less patriarchal gender attitudes. That bacha posh is often driven by a large number of daughters in the family with a corresponding low number of sons suggests that bacha posh is a response to very contextual features of Afghan life, including the preference for sons. Bacha posh in the family is linked to less patriarchal gender norms and can be a way for girls and women to acquire education, mobility and engagement in income-generating activities.

Keywords: Afghanistan, bacha posh, gender norms, gender segregation, women’s empowerment