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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of “Korta Vägen” (The short cut), a targeted language program for qualified migrants in Sweden, in self-maintaining, well-being and perspectives for socio-economic integration for foreigners with academic diploma.

In-class observations, individual semi-structured interviews, focus-group interviews and written essays were used for data collection. A thematic analysis was applied as a method of data analysis. Amartya Sen’s capability approach constituted a theoretical framework of the research discussion.

Korta Vägen provides various resources for the participants, some of which (language training and internship) can become real advantages for employment. Others (IT, interview training and CV writing) are less translatable into concrete outcomes. The study suggests that satisfaction with the program is modulated by commitment to one’s professional identity, initial language proficiency, scope of cultural knowledge, the participants’ goals and the flexibility of the training offered. The acculturation frame of the program does not necessarily correspond with the objective need of many participants for quick entry into the labor market.

Insights into the social-psychological aspects of targeted language training as a measure for socio-economic integration can serve to enhance educational and institutional policies and professional practice.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

For adequate bibliographical information about Baudelaire's works one must go to collected editions by no means readily available in Great Britain. Information concerning the extensive literature about Baudelaire is still farther to seek. For the English reader the bibliography in Arthur Symons's study mentioned below has not been superseded, although important editions of Baudelaire's works have been issued and much written about him since 1920.

Few dispute the very strong likelihood that within twenty years the global information infrastructure, often referred to as the internet or “the net” will become as generalized, indispensable and invisible as today”s phone or electrical networks. Many commentators also expect this digital web to become the host for cyberspace, the next frontier. This article provides an overview of where a wide range of experts from business, government and the academic world believe this rapidly expanding global information infrastructure is heading over the next two decades.

Though many conceptual and empirical studies have been conducted on the servicescape, limited research has focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped factors influencing the servicescape. This paper aims to propose an extension of Bitner’s original conceptualization, including pandemic-induced physical and social constraints on servicescape in the form of crowding, consumer risk perception during the crisis and their impact on consumers' and employees’ behavioral changes in retail and hospitality sectors.

This paper critically reviewed the past and emerging servicescape and risk literature. It then examines and delineates the concepts of crowding, density and associated risk perceptions to offer an extended servicescape framework. Alongside, scales were proposed to measure the constructs and guidelines given to conduct future empirical studies.

This paper discussed the major impact on servicescape during a pandemic situation, to what extent risk is perceived during consumption and the impact of crowding and store density on employee and customer behavioral responses.

This paper principally contributes by explicitly including specific risk dimensions and crowding and proposes the scales to measure consumers’ understanding of pandemic-induced perceptions of risk, crowding and density within servicescapes for further empirical testing. Alongside this, the identification and concretization of different types of perceived risks under COVID-19 provide critical and useful marketing implications.

This study identifies relevant risk dimensions, proposes crowding as an independent construct apart from servicescape physicality and proposes relevant measures for empirical verification.

The tax advantage of debt is considered an important motivation for highly leveraged transactions. The German government limited the tax deductibility of interest expenses to 30.0 percent of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (the interest barrier rule) in 2008 to reduce the tax incentives for debt financing. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the introduction of the interest barrier rule.

The paper analyzes the changes in the value of the tax shield for German leveraged buyouts as a result of the promulgation of an interest barrier rule. Tax shields are computed to quantify the wealth transfer from taxpayers to corporations.

Prior to the 2008 tax reform, tax shields contributed 8.4 percent to the transaction price, thereby raising the equity value by 33.0 percent on average. With the introduction of the interest barrier rule, the value of tax shields is reduced by 35.1 percent. Affecting more than 75 percent of buyouts, the rule significantly lessens the tax incentive for high levels of debt. The reduction of the corporate tax rate from 31.7 percent to 26.3 percent further lowers the value creation potential. The limited interest deductibility may therefore reduce the number of leveraged buyouts and hence economic growth, unless other non‐debt forms of financing can fulfill the need for capital.

As the first continental European study, this research concentrates on the impact of the German interest barrier rule on value creation in highly leveraged transactions. Conclusions can be drawn in a broader European context.

Duchamp caused a revolution in the art of the twentieth century with the readymade concept, and simultaneously he opened Pandora's Box, which converted art into a simulation and made it dependent on discursive practices. This degenerated into a deconstructive vulgate when, from the 1960s onwards, an ‘aesthetic of banality’ was accentuated and the media institutionalized the ‘guerrilla’ between the practices and the discourses. Art ‘wrecked’ in a regime of hyper-reality of the image, and the art paradigms and criteria shifted from aesthetics to the law of the financial markets. At the same time, the proliferation of coexisting cultural ideas and a revolving cultural miscegenation ended up splitting the kingdom of the art. In the art world today, there is a cleavage between artists: on one side, the adepts to the heteronomy (a line that was born with ready-made products), those who, following dominant rules, work for the market and the organizations; on the other side, those, more passionate, for whom art is a hermeneutics for self-knowledge. Meanwhile, Picasso's aura returns to the art scene, in a panorama that until now was adverse to him.