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Number of women in formal employment in India is significantly lower than that of men, and few women join and participate actively in trade unions in India. This paper attempts to study the factors influencing participation of women workers in unions in India. It is based on the assumption by Klandermans (1984) that the willingness to participate in an activity is the weighted sum of goal motives, social motives and reward motives. Goal and reward motives of participating in union may be related to union instrumentality, whereas social motives may be linked to approval for union participation from family, colleagues and employer. Willingness to participate is the weighted sum of these motives. Convenience in participating in union-related activities is another determinant of union participation. We propose that union instrumentality moderates the relationship of women's participation in trade unions with approval and convenience as independent variables. Women's participation in trade unions was measured with four indices of worker participation in union activities from the scale originally used by Chacko (1985) and a self-developed item. Convenience and approval were measured by five-item and four-item self-developed Likert-type scales respectively. The construct of union instrumentality has been evaluated by using a seven-item Likert-type scale with items derived from union instrumentality questionnaires available in literature.Data from a sample of 214 women workers of 8 manufacturing units across 5 public sector organisations was subject to hierarchical regression analysis. Findings lend support to the moderating effect of union instrumentality. Our study sheds light on the nature of relationship of convenience of women workers and approval of their family, peers and employer on their participation in trade unions, and shows a positive relationship between these constructs. The findings add to existing literature that examines the antecedents of workers' participation in trade unions, especially in context of women. Moreover, our research has illustrated union instrumentality as a moderator in the relationship of convenience and approval with participation in trade unions. We may hence deduce that women workers who have convenience as well as approval from their peers, employers and family members are more likely to participate positively in union-related activities.

This study explores the relationship between Earnings Management and Impression Management in the context of some European listed companies. The analysis focuses on the readability of annual reports, measured by the file size. Earnings management is assessed using the modified Jones model. The sample consists of 2,953 listed companies from 17 industries of 24 European countries between 2012 and 2018 resulting in 13,020 firm-year observations. It has been found that one standard deviation increase in financial reports file size increases discretionary accruals in around 4%. These results are robust across different sample specifications in terms of firms' size, industry and country. The findings show that increased intensity in the use of discretionary accruals is obfuscated by the disclosure of less readable annual reports, implying that Earnings Management and Impression Management are used complementarily. The conclusions have impact both for investment management and for policy, preventing inefficient allocation of capital budgeting and providing additional information that improves regulation on financial reporting transparency.
AcknowledgmentThe authors are grateful to financial support from FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), national funding through research grant (UID/SOC/04521/2020).

Electric vehicles can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, increase energy efficiency, and help to reduce the dependency on oil imports. However, today's technical and economic challenges are preventing mass-market adoption. In order to create an early market and support economies of scale in production, some European countries have already established support schemes. This research study aims to provide an overview of the existing support schemes in Europe and to assess them using four criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, practicability, and political acceptance. The study concludes with an impact analysis of today's economic support schemes which considers the total costs of ownership. While one-time support schemes help to reduce the large initial investments for EVs, recurring instruments are often more effective and efficient but also smaller in volume. The comparison of the different regional incentive schemes reveals that EVs today are only economically attractive in Denmark and Norway, but at relatively high prices. Thus, regulators need to increase the volume and efficiency of the support schemes, establish high scoring instruments, and align these on a European scale. In addition, non-monetary support, e.g. free-parking, can help to overcome technical or smaller economic hurdles.

Electric vehicles can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, increase energy effi-ciency, and help to reduce the dependency on oil imports. However, today's technical and economic challenges are preventing mass-market adoption. In order to create an early market and support economies of scale in production, some European countries have already established support schemes. This research study aims to provide an overview of the existing support schemes in Europe and to assess them using four criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, practicability, and political acceptance. The study concludes with an impact analysis of today's economic support schemes which considers the total costs of ownership. While one-time support schemes help to reduce the large initial investments for EVs, recurring instruments are often more effective and efficient but also smaller in volume. The comparison of the different regional incentive schemes reveals that EVs today are only economically attractive in Denmark and Norway, but at relatively high prices. Thus, regulators need to increase the volume and efficiency of the support schemes, establish high scoring instruments, and align these on a European scale. In addition, non-monetary support, e.g. free-parking, can help to overcome technical or smaller economic hurdles.

Will similarities in the nature of the twin problems of controlling unwanted immigration and absorbing newcomers lead to a convergence of European and American immigration and integration policies? A conference of 70 leading American and European researchers and policymakers in Charleston, South Carolina on May 13–14, sponsored by the European Communities Studies Association, discussed the gap between immigration goals and realities on both sides of the Atlantic, and worried about whether current steps taken to promote integration will be successful. They reached apparent consensus on three points: 1) immigration pressures in Europe and the United States are rising and are unlikely to abate soon; 2) there is no compelling economic or demographic case for opening borders to mass migration; 3) there are no clear historical or contemporary models that provide beacons to guide integration policies.

This report analyses and interrogates the accountability and transparency regime of the European Union's border agency Frontex. Frontex was established as a European Union agency in the field of border, migration and asylum policies in 2004 and began operating in 2005. Over the last 15 years, the mandate of the agency, originally tasked with coordinating the operational management of the European Union's external border through support to the EU's member states, has expanded significantly. Through a series of reforms, most notably in 2007, and 2016 and 2019, the agency has become a pivotal actor in what is referred to as 'European Integrated Border Management'. Since the creation of the agency and its first operations, there has been significant concern, both from the European Parliament as well as NGOs and other civil society organisations that the executive mandate of the agency has not been counterbalanced by effective mechanisms for accountability, particularly with respect to fundamental rights. To an extent, the Frontex monitoring and accountability regime has improved since 2011 through legislative change, thus strengthening the above mechanisms. The findings of the report however show that despite the continued expansion and strengthening of monitoring and accountability mechanisms since 2016, these efforts have again not resulted in an effective system for monitoring, investigating, addressing, and preventing fundamental rights violations at Europe's external borders.

AbstractObjectivesWe attempt to examine how union membership affects redistributive attitudes. We argue that the impact of union membership on support for redistributive policies is conditional on the economic inequality between the union and nonunion members (between group inequality [BGI]). When BGI is high, unions have less incentive to emphasize the solidaristic redistributive norm because the majority of union members would not be the beneficiaries of government redistribution.MethodsWe employ multilevel modeling using the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) datasets that cover 39 countries between 1985 and 2010.ResultsWe find that the positive effect of union membership on individual support for redistributive policies decreases as the level of BGI increases.ConclusionOur study demonstrates the importance of group‐level inequality as the contextual factor in explaining the nexus between union membership and preferences for government redistribution. It also suggests that unions play a substantial role in shaping members' attitudes toward government policies in general.