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International tourism and FDI inflows have generated detectable beneficial impacts on the economy of Estonia in the last decades. However, recently, poor international market conditions mostly caused by the trade war and COVID-19 pandemic have been a potential threat to these two factors. Besides, the poor performance of investments in recent years is behind the stagnation of productivity in Estonia. This study examines the dynamics of the effects of these factors on the rate of economic growth in Estonia and provides policy implications in line with sustained recovery.

A nonlinear ARDL technique is employed in this study to investigate the long-run effects of FDI and the degree of tourism specialization on economic growth rate.

Our findings indicate that the economic growth rate of Estonia in the long run has been positively affected by both the rate of FDI inflows and international tourism.

This is the first study that employs a non-linear approach to investigate the dynamics of long-run effects of FDI and tourism specialization on the rate of economic growth in Estonia and provides policy implications in line with optimal growth strategy considering the economic structure, the current level of productivity and available potentials in this economy.

This paper modifies the “standard” methodology for calculating the economic opportunity cost of foreign exchange (EOCFX), so as to incorporate into its calculation the distortions involved in the act of “sourcing” in the capital market the funds that will be spent by the project. Once we take these “sourcing” distortions into account, we are logically forced to pursue two parallel calculations. The first, EOCFX traces the results of sourcing money in the capital market and spending it on tradables. The second, the shadow price of nontradables outlays (SPNTO) traces the results of sourcing money in the capital market and spending it on nontradables. Supporting arguments and illustrative calculations are presented in the paper.

Recent research has challenged traditional views of the 1920s-era Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Case studies have shown that the movement appealed to a broad middle-class constituency and advocated a range of popular reforms. These findings have stimulated a provocative debate over whether the movement represented a mainstream “civic populism” or a more racist reaction to change. Here, I review the recent debate and show how the new data are consistent with current sociological models of collective action. Comparing studies of Klan mobilization in several cities, I argue that the movement was both populist and racist, combining processes of contemporary urban racial and class formation. From this perspective, I suggest, the 1920s Klan highlights a critical moment in the development of racial and class identities in 20th century urban America.

This paper is a part of a series of papers seeking insight into a holistic perspective into the lives, experiences and vulnerabilities of male-to-female transgender persons (from here on referred to as “transgender persons”/“Ladyboys”) within the sex industry in Southeast Asia. “Ladyboy” in Thai context specifically refers to the cultural subgroup, rather than the person’s gender identity and is not seen as an offensive term. Among the minimal studies that have been conducted, the majority have focused on sexual health and the likelihood of contracting or spreading HIV/AIDS, while often ignoring the possibility of other vulnerabilities. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The study interviews 60 transgender persons working within red light areas of Bangkok. The final research instrument was a questionnaire of 11 sub-themes, containing both multiple choice and open-ended questions.

This study found that 81 percent of participants had entered the sex industry due to financial necessity. There was also a high vulnerability among transgender sex workers to physical and sexual violence. This includes nearly a quarter (24 percent) who cite being forced to have sex and 26 percent who cite physical assault within the last 12 months.

These findings can aid the development of programs and social services that address the needs of ladyboys, looking beyond gender expression and social identity to meet needs and vulnerabilities that often go overlooked.

This survey provides deeper understanding of the vulnerability of transgender sex workers, including their trajectory into sex work and potential alternatives.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

This chapter seeks to reassess the film GoldenEye (Campbell, 1995), and its highly successful (Impellizeri, 2010) videogame adaptation GoldenEye 007 (Rare, 1997), in light of the concept of the Hegemony of Play (Fron, Fullerton, Morie, & Pearce, 2007), which seeks to critique the dominance of the hypermasculine ‘gamer’ identity in videogame culture (a persona GoldenEye anticipates in its problematic character Boris Grishenko).

Since the gamer is bound up in the very technological materiality of videogames as a medium and an industry (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009), central to this discussion is the significant yet highly ambivalent role technology continues to play in the Bond films, both extending and threatening (Leach, 2015; Nitins, 2010) Bond’s natural male skill and intuition (McGowan, 2010). Indeed, GoldenEye is a particularly salient study since many suggest Brosnan to be the most technologically adept (or dependent) of the Bonds (Rositzka, 2015; Willis, 2003), and I will argue that the film and game together explore just what happens when Bond’s implacable force meets the immutable technological object, providing a fascinating lens through which to read the larger technocultural shifts embodied in the transition to the immaterial economies of cognitive capitalism (Hardt & Negri, 2001) and their potential to disrupt traditional, patriarchal gender configurations (Haraway, 1991; Hayles, 2005; Plant, 1998; Wajcman, 2004).

Core to this is a critical reading of the game’s popular multiplayer mode, where exploration of whether technology can be understood to potentially level the gender playing field (Jones, 2015) or whether the fact that such technology is always already encoded as masculine (Chess, 2017) ultimately undercuts this ambition.