If voters of different countries adhere to different and deeply rooted cultural norms, when these countries interact their leaders may find it impossible to agree on effi cient policies especially in hard times. Political leaders’actions are bound by a “conformity constraint”that requires them to express policies that do not violate these norms. This inhibits politicians from adopting the optim...

This paper proposes an essay concerning the understanding of human behaviours and crisis management of crowds in extreme situations, such as evacuation through complex venues. The first part focuses on the understanding of the main features of the crowd viewed as a living, hence complex system. The main concepts are subsequently addressed, in the second part, to a critical analysis of mathemati...

Software process improvement is seen by many as a viable strategy for overcoming the software crisis. It is, however, difficult to determine the actual effect of such improvement efforts. This paper reports from an organization that is implementing a software metrics program with the expressed purpose of measuring the effects of their improvement project. The metrics program is intended to meas...

I n an increasingly interconnected world, the potential for infectious diseases to spread internationally is an inescapable fact. The country will face one or more infectious disease health threats over the course of the next administration. Dealing with these threats will require science-based assessment, judicious management, and effective risk communication. Over the past 8 years, a number o...

Existing studies of country funds utilize return measures and do not consider the effects of investor risk specifically. We examine the time-varying asymmetric investor risk hypothesis for country fund premiums and find that volume and volatility in both the U.S. and foreign markets are generally important. While the U.S. volume and volatility are more important than similar foreign variables o...

The huge earthquake in 11 March 2012 which followed by a destructive tsunami in Japan was largest recorded earthquake in the history. Japan is pioneer in disaster management, especially earthquakes. How this developed country faced this disaster, which had significant worldwide effects? The humanitarian behavior of the Japanese people amazingly wondered the word's media, meanwhile the managemen...

Traditionally, financial systems have been bank-based or market-based. The efficiency properties of these systems are compared in various dimensions. These include risk sharing, information provision, funding new industries, corporate governance, and law, finance and politics. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. With regard to stability, both bank-based and market-based systems are ...

If voters of different countries adhere to different and deeply rooted cultural norms, when these countries interact their leaders may find it impossible to agree on effi cient policies especially in hard times. Political leaders’actions are bound by a “conformity constraint”that requires them to express policies that do not violate these norms. This inhibits politicians from adopting the optim...

Post hoc evaluations made of crisis situations and exercises often point at communication as an important reason for the failure of the management and coordination of the crisis. Crisis managers have to deal with the problem that they (and all other actors in the field) don’t have the right information to coordinate the efforts and solve the crisis situation. This paper examines the relation be...