Suchergebnisse

AbstractObjectiveTo explore through the lens of the theoretical framework whether parents achieved any forms of improved parenting during the pandemic; in what way parents improved, if any; and what led to improved parenting.BackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic and its repercussions gave rise to multiple challenges and hardships confronting children and parents. The ways parents handled the parenting demands varied. The research documented the presence of both unhealthy and nurturing parenting behaviors during the pandemic. During this course in which parents responded to the parenting demands, some facets of parenting (e.g., parenting practices, parenting cognitions) were subject to change. The current study placed the focus on positive parental changes, if any.MethodThe study employed a phenomenological approach. Fourteen parents (female = 12; White = 8; Black = 4, and Asian = 2; 11 of 14 were upper‐ to lower‐middle‐class families) constituted the sample. One‐on‐one semistructured interviews were conducted over Zoom for data collection. Thematic analysis was performed for data analysis.ResultsFour themes were constructed: targeted parental responses and changes, refined parenting skills and practices, enhanced understanding of parenting, and unsettled parenting styles.ConclusionSome parents achieved improved parenting (e.g., refined parenting skills, a new understanding of childrearing). Whether and to what extent parents bettered themselves were conditional on whether and how far parents went to adapt or adjust their parenting.ImplicationAlthough substantially improving parenting skills appears to be difficult, parents can still bring benefits to family by bettering themselves incrementally. Practitioners need to be a source of reinvigoration for parents who aim to improve their parenting and family equilibrium, particularly in the context of a crisis.

The Biden administration has demonstrated high emphasis on economic competition among major powers. Although it has stated multiple times that the US does not seek confrontation with China, the Biden administration's security policy toward China, compared with that of the Trump administration, is more confrontational, which is underscored by its constant pushing of China's red line in the Taiwan issue. Strategic competition against China is clearly regarded as the pivot of the foreign policy by the Biden administration, which has lowered expectation of China and has changed the mentality of striving for "big deals" to "no deal" in its China policy. The Biden administration believes that the US has a long-term advantage, and has developed a composite strategy comprised of two tactics based on its perception of the strategic positioning and the competitive status of China and the US. The first is a dominant strategy of (to gain advantages by risk avoiding), namely to cut off China's access to external technological innovation resources and maintain the long-term advantage of the US while avoiding bilateral interactions of high costs, risks, and uncertainties, in order to ensure a lasting and secure victory as much as possible. The second is a supporting strategy of (to prevent wars by enhancing commitment), which aims to prevent China from taking high-risk actions or launching military challenges against the US on key issues when perceiving disadvantage. and focus, respectively, on economic and security policies, which together constitute the logic for the US strategic competition against China. To this end, the US has strengthened its strategic deterrence against China by reinforcing its key foreign commitments and mobilizing its allies.

AbstractIn this article I examine the causal impact of air pollution on the corporate information environment. My empirical findings indicate that firms located in cities with severe air pollution tend to experience higher information asymmetry. The economic mechanisms behind this casual association come from the negative impact of air pollution on corporate governance and managerial human capital. Specifically, the positive causal association between air pollution and corporate information asymmetry is less pronounced for firms with stronger corporate governance and better managerial ability. In addition, firms exposed to more severe air pollution tend to have fewer board meetings. All main empirical findings are robust to a system generalized method of moments estimation, two‐stage least squares tests using thermal inversions as an instrumental variable, regression discontinuity tests based on the Huai River policy, and difference‐in‐difference estimations based on the 2013 Clean Air Action Plan in China. Furthermore, all main findings are confirmed by robustness tests, such as alternative proxies of air pollution and information asymmetry, and the exclusion of first‐tier cities.

Since de-collectivization and economic liberalisation in the early 1980s, people from villages and small towns have been flowing into cities in China. The rural-urban migration has arisen along with the great socio-economic restructuring in contemporary China. Excluded by the state's household registration system and capitalist market, rural migrants are often seen as the symptom of China's pathological transformation. However, based on an ethnography of rural migrants in Shanghai, my dissertation suggests that these migrants understand the great socio-economic transformation as an opportunity for entrepreneurship. My dissertation argues that rural migrants' entrepreneurial aspirations should not be understood as the power effects of neoliberalism on subject-making; rather they are related to their understanding of the emerging society and their position within it with reference to the money economy. My dissertation presents an analysis of rural migrants' own understandings of the great socio-economic transformations that have taken place in contemporary China. With labour migration and the expanding money economy, an ambivalent "society" emerges from family, community and state. The economy---the operation of the market, the circulation of money, the organization of labour---overlaps with family and state, and destabilizes the moral unity and power hierarchy of them respectively. My ethnographic analysis demonstrates that money mediates my informants' understandings of the emerging society. Money here is not the specific medium of the economic sphere but enables the emergent society to develop its own contingency. The emergent society promises inclusion through entrepreneurship but also involves dangerous frauds. The relationship between the economy and society should not be understood in terms of moral embeddedness and the control of power but in terms of contingency. The person is included in the emergent society not through moral solidarity and political action but through entrepreneurial aspiration. ...

AbstractThis study examines the impact from the COVID‐19 pandemic on the association between Chinese firms' SEO announcements and market reaction afterwards. Our findings indicate that market investors would respond more negatively to the SEO announcements and undergo more SEO underpricing for firms from regions significantly affected by the pandemic than those from the less‐affected regions. Furthermore, higher CSR scores and more involvements in accounting conservatism could mitigate these effects. The main mechanism of the moderating effect from CSR performance and accounting conservatism is that CSR investment and accounting conservatism could lessen information asymmetry between the SEO announced firms and outside investors. Finally, we document that the main motivation of SEO issuance during the pandemic is market timing.