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Recent developments in the psychometric assessment of youth psychopathic traits suggest that the inclusion of a conduct disorder (CD) factor to the traditional three factors of the psychopathy construct may improve the incremental validity of these measures. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether the addition of a CD factor incrementally improves the ability of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory Short version (YPI-S) to predict criminal recidivism.

A longitudinal quantitative research design was used with a sample detained male youth (N = 214, M_age = 16.4 years, SD_age = 1.3 years).

Results using the area under the curve analysis suggest that the inclusion of a CD factor slightly improves the capacity of the YPI-S to predict one-year general criminal recidivism, but it does not significantly increase its capacity to predict violent criminal recidivism. Results also indicate that a CD scale outperforms the YPI-S, even with an additional CD factor included, in terms of predicting one-year general and violent recidivism.

Self-reported youth psychopathic trait measures, even those that include a CD factor as a fourth factor, should be used with caution when the aim is to predict youth criminal recidivism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study using a self-reported youth psychopathic traits measure with a CD factor to examine youth criminal recidivism.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether nonlinearities could be present in electricity loads observed in subtropical environments, where none or little heating is required, and whether threshold autoregressive (TAR)-type regime switching models could be advantageous in the modeling of those loads.

The actual observed load of a Brazilian regional electricity distributor from January 2013 to August 2012 was modeled using a popularly employed ARMA model for reference, and smooth and non-smooth TAR transition (non-linear) models were used as non-linear regime switching models.

Evidence of nonlinearities were found in the load series, and evidence was also found on the intrinsic resistance of this type of models to structural breaks in the data. Additionally, to reacting well to asymmetries in the data, these models avoid the use of exogenous variables. Altogether, this could prove to be a definite advantage of the use of such model alternatives.

However, even if the present work may have been limited by the observation frequency of the available data, it appears TAR models appear to be a viable alternative to forecasting short-term electricity loads. Nonetheless, additional research is required to achieve a higher accuracy of forecast data.

If such models can be successfully used, it will be a great advantage for electricity generators, as the computational effort involved in the use of such models is not significantly larger than regular linear ones.

To our knowledge, this type of research has not yet been made with subtropical/tropical electricity load data.

This study aims to analyze the returns obtained from companies with strong growth potential (growth stocks) and the returns from companies with quite low stock prices, but with high value (value stocks).

The sample comprises monthly data, from January 2002 to December 2016, from seven countries, Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK, Portugal, the USA and Japan. The authors have used linear regression models for three different periods, the pre-crisis, subprime crisis and post-crisis period.

The results point out that the performance of value and growth stocks differs from different periods surrounding the global financial crisis. In fact, for six countries, value stocks outperformed growth stocks in the period that precedes the subprime crisis and during the crisis, this tendency remained only for France, Portugal and Japan. This trend changed in the period following the crisis. The results also show that investor sentiment has a robust significance in value and growth stock returns, mostly in the period before the crisis, highlighting that the investor sentiment is more significant in the moments that the value stocks outperformed.

As far as the authors know, this is the first work that, taking into account the future research lines of Capaul et al. (1993), investigates whether the results obtained by those authors remain current, meeting the authors’ challenge and covering the gap of recent studies on the performance of value and growth stocks. Besides, the authors have introduced a new country, heavily punished by both the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis to understand whether there are significant differences in investment styles and whether this is related to the different economies. Also, in this context, the authors were pioneers in adding investor sentiment as an exogenous variable in the influence of stock returns.

The West African Republic of Guinea-Bissau has been unstable since gaining its independence in 1974. The 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections are being closely analyzed to study how the United Nations and the Guinean people have reacted to the outcomes of these elections. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Sociological methodologies and a comparative approach have been used in this paper to understand why the elections in 2014 were so important in this country.

The author finds that stability is possible in Guinea-Bissau after years of political uncertainties.

Particular focus has been paid to studying the responses of specific aspects of society, including the youth population, the political elite, the main political party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, the opposition parties and the army and whether these different groups will be able to cooperate after electing a sustainable and relatively wide-ranging government.

In this chapter, the author provides an overview of some central issues of the book. First she shows the similarities in the challenges to increase the participation and success of Roma people in education and lifelong learning in the selected European countries; then she discusses their policies and support programmes, which on the one hand try to improve the social situation of the Roma while promoting minority language and culture on the other hand. The author finds the reason for their similarities regarding the wording, defining and communicating and also concerning the main ideas and concrete projects for possible solutions, in the Roma inclusion policy of the European Union in the frame of the Open Method of Coordination, which has been introduced within the Lisbon Strategy, linked to the idea of lifelong learning. She considers the realisation of these policy measures at national, regional and local levels to have shown only unsatisfactory results until now.

To propose a multi‐criteria approach for ranking the performance of the economic sectors of the Portuguese economy and to identify the most attractive sectors.

A multi‐criteria approach using ELECTRE III and SRF software for eliciting the weights of criteria is used to solve the ranking problem statement.

The sector non‐metallic mineral products was ranked in first place in relation to all the rankings; the wholesale trade and retailing trade sectors were ranked in second place in relation to all the rankings; the sector wood, cork and furniture was ranked often in second place; the electronic and electrical industry sectors was ranked in third place; the agriculture and fishing sector was ranked in the tail‐end of the ranking; the agro‐industry sector and the transportation and distribution sector consistently were ranked in the lowest positions, just before the agriculture and fishing sector.

Other evaluation criteria can be used to improve the relative ranking classification, namely strategic and operational performance measures.

The results of this application are useful for investors, business leaders, and policy makers. From the perspective of potential investors, investment opportunities can be evaluated based on the attractiveness of the economic sectors studied. From the perspective of Portuguese policy makers and business leaders, sectors of the Portuguese economy that are in need of fundamental restructuring are easily identified. For these sectors, business strategies and policy initiatives that are based on benchmarking effective innovations are in order. Therefore, joint partnership between business leaders, policy makers and higher education to lay the ground for innovative practices in these sectors may prove very useful.

The proposed multi‐criteria approach utilized in this study is simple; furthermore it has the capacity to deal well with uncertainty. This study also contributes to an important, yet relatively new body of application‐based literature, dealing with a multi‐criteria approach to decision making with the aid of fuzzy theory methodologies.